During and after the dramatic Easter Sunday rescue of Captain Phillips of Maersk Alabama, there was considerable discussion here and at other venues regarding whether or not the actions of the US Navy SEALs in popping the three pirates would do more harm than good. There was fear that this would somehow “escalate the violence”. That somehow, despite binding and gagging their prisoners and threatening them with the ubiquitous AK-47s, the pirates didn’t really have evil intent.I brought this point up in a Bloggingheads discussion with Rachel Kleinfeld of the Truman Project. The entire line of thought seems odd to me, but I think that something productive can be gained from thinking about it in more depth. Part of the point of mine and Rachels' conversation was to work out a)whether a progressive security policy existed, and b) in broad terms, what that policy might be. One key point that Rachel and I agreed on was that it is possible to be simultaneously true that pirates fall somewhat short of any useful definition of "evil", and need, as a matter of policy, to sometimes be killed.
I wonder if the helicopter pilots would agree with the rather silly and naive assertions that the pirates really mean no harm, and are just trying to provide for their families. Let’s hope this is an argument-ender for such nonsense. Appeasement of bullies does nothing but make the problem worse, the bullies bolder.
We need to get it through our heads that sometimes, some people need to be killed. A pirate on the deck of a rogue ship banging away at a Navy helo with a heavy machine gun fits nicely into that category.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the young pirates who are regularly employed as hard labor in vessel seizures engage in such behavior primarily because of dire economic straits. Piracy is dirty, dangerous business, and I suspect that people who have other plausible options will not, by and large, choose employment as pirates. Poverty isn't the only determinant for the choice of piracy as a profession; pirates do sometimes hail from relatively wealthy countries, and there are many poor countries that don't harbor large populations of pirates. It would be silly, however, to contend that there's no relationship; the availability of cheap labor to Somali pirate lords has to be understood as a key component in the piracy crisis.
When Captain Phillips was rescued, I think it would be fair to characterize the response of the progressive blogosphere as low volume celebration. There was admiration for the skill of the snipers involved, nice thoughts about the "decisiveness" of the President, and general happiness that Captain Phillips was safe. At the same time, there was a certain nervousness; the pirates who had been killed were neither Nazis bent on world domination nor terrorists dedicated to destroying the fabric of American society. Rather, they were young men who wouldn't have been there if better opportunities had been available in Somalia. Moreover, I think that progressives by and large believe that most, but not all, of the difficulties we face in foreign and security policy rise to the level of problem, but fall short of evil.
My takeaway from this is that there's virtue in stripping the triumphalism away from foreign policy success. I think it's best to view rescue of Captain Phillips was a good thing in and of itself. I'm deeply suspicious, however, of attempts to characterize the victory as a triumph over evil, or even as a triumph that was peculiarly American (French, British, and Indians have also demonstrated a facility at killing pirates). I think further that working through a specifically progressive security policy (including its necessary maritime component) requires recognizing that the exercise of state power (at home or abroad) is invariably fraught with moral ambiguity. At the same time, recognition of ambiguity cannot serve as excuse for paralysis. A dilemma, yes, but then all conceptions of security produce their own dilemmas.
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