Somali pirates seize Americans

Somali pirates attacked and seized a Danish owned, US flagged cargo ship off the coast of Mogadishu. From the Reuter's report:

"Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, told Reuters the 17,000 ton Maersk Alabama had been seized off Mogadishu far out in the Indian Ocean, but all its crew were believed to be unharmed."

The crew they refer to consists of 20 American citizens.

"A spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) in Nairobi told Reuters that among the vessel's cargo were 232 containers of WFP relief food destined for Somalia and Uganda."

That's classy. Regardless, what the ship was holding is irrelevant. When these pirates began acting up, I said then that we ought to act. The French and Indians were taking all the bad ass points away from us, fighting piracy on the high seas. We have done a little bit. In this article on Military.com, we helped out the Germans in chasing down some other pirates in the area. Still, as Europe is fond of reminding us, we aren't the World Police.

Now it is personal. They've seen a vessel, operated by our citizens, flying our flag, and yet they dared to attack it. It's one thing to ignore a problem when our citizens aren't involved. For us to ignore it now would show a lack of credibility and the ability to project our military force to protect our citizens (in layman's terms, it would show the US Gov't, and the Navy in particular, have completely lost their cajones).

Here's what we need to do:

1) Send in our Secret Squirrel teams to save our citizens. I know we have them. You know we have them. We're paying for them, let's use them!

2) Find out how much replacing the ship would cost. Something tells me it wouldn't be too much, and it would be worth every cent in street cred. Why, you ask? Because the next step is...

3) Blow the ship to Kingdom Come. I mean annihilate it. Remove it from the face of the Earth. Completely obliterate it and everything on it. No living thing, not even a bloody ship rat, should be left in one piece. Send a clear message: Do NOT mess with us.

We're letting this guy push us around. Seriously?

UPDATE: Score one for the Americans. The crew has reportedly overpowered their captors, throwing three pirates overboard and taking another captive. Hells yeah!

FINAL(?) UPDATE: The negotiations ended the way they should have ended: With three dead pirates, and the fourth in our possession. They say they will retaliate against us. My response? We show them exactly what retaliation means.