Lunacy begets piracy

[antsi]

The issuance of a few Letters of Marque to US flagged vessels for the suppression of piracy combined with prize rules and/or an outright bounty on pirates, would, I expect go a long way toward solving the pirate problem.

In one important respect this situation is funadmentally different than the 18th or 19th century conflicts where letters of marque were frequently issued.

Back then, letters of marque were issued by a government with the idea that the ship owners who had LoM would prey on the enemy's merchant shipping. They weren't armed for heavy combat - their intent was to go after high value "soft" targets. The motivation for the LoM was profit; for the issuing government it was striking at the enemy's trade and thereby "discomforting" the enemy government.

In this situation, those motivations don't exist. The pirates aren't an important constituent of any foreign government that our government wants to pressure. Nor do they have much value for a LoM to pursue them - it would be an awful lot of investment in ships/weapons/men/time/effort to go capture a pirate for the "booty" of a couple speedboats, a half dozen AK's, and an RPG.

As you suggested, the government could just put a bounty on the pirates - thus providing the motivation for the LoM to pursue them. It would have to be a hefty bounty to be worth the effort, though. And once you capture them, then what? Try them in a criminal court and throw them in jail? A lot of the places these pirates come from are starving failed states, so putting them in a sheltered box with three square meals a day would be like upgrading to first class. Execute them? You would run into all kinds of problems with the laws of the countries involved in that case. There would also be problems with fake bounty seeking - you know, just capture any old boat full of third worlders, drop an AK and a RPG in their boat, and turn them in for pirate money.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it lies more along the lines of making the targets harder. As pointed out above, there would have to be some legal changes to make it practical arming merchant ships to defend themselves. However, it shouldn't take too much of this kind of thing to get governments to change their blissninny minds about letting the good guys have some guns to shoot back.

 

[jeremy]

The Constitution of the United States authorized Congress to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal. While there exists a treaty prohibiting such things, the US is not a signatory to that treaty.

The issuance of a few Letters of Marque to US flagged vessels for the suppression of piracy combined with prize rules and/or an outright bounty on pirates, would, I expect go a long way toward solving the pirate problem.

Unfortunately, Pelosi's crowd would never go for it. They'd much rather "understand" the pirates and "feel their pain."

How about we help them feel the pain. By having them ride ships though that area. H*ll even cruise ships are being pirated in that region. A couple of months ago a group got ballsy and tried a run on one of our destroyers.