Looking Deeper Into The Pirate Attack On MAERSK ALABAMA

In my post from yesterday, I wondered whether or not the Somali pirate attack on the U.S.-flagged MAERSK ALABAMA may have been a result of the pirates being emboldened by Obama's various shows of weakness during his European tour.

Other are thinking exactly what I was thinking. An editorial from Investor's Business Daily notes some interesting circumstances that we must not be dismissive of and what the consequences of any action by the Obama administration would be.

From the article:

At 7:30 a.m., 280 miles off the Somali coast, a gang of pirates attacked the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama carrying 17,000 tons of U.S. humanitarian aid to Kenya. It was the sixth ship hit since Saturday, but the first U.S.-flagged vessel hit since 1804. ... It poses an important test for the new Obama administration, still not 100 days in power, and it's critical the response be decisive. First, it's likely the pirates knew it was an American ship, given the planning and firepower it takes to hit one 280 miles off the coast. If that's so, then the attack had a political aspect, and the pirates wanted to show the U.S. as weak. Two, the pirates aren't the only bad actors in that region. Terrorists will watch the U.S. response closely and adjust their calculations accordingly. Unlike the foreign affairs jaunts Obama has participated in, involving only talk, this incident will be judged by the concreteness of the response.

I know that somewhere along the line Obama said that he "had no patience" for those who blow up bombs for political ends, but those are simply words. I highly doubt that if Obama comes out and says that he "has no patience" with Somali pirates that the pirates will suddenly release their hostages and free all of the ships they captured.

Words do not deter criminals and terrorists. Effectively forceful responses do. Say what you want about President Bush, but you have to acknowledge the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001. If the terrorists still hated us afterward, what stopped them from mounting anymore attacks? The effective use of force by the Bush administration, that's what.

Obama's response is one we must watch carefully. And here is why:

Precedent is worth noting. In 1993, with Bill Clinton's presidency just beginning, Somali hoodlums also attacked and murdered American troops delivering aid to the indigent. They dragged the troops' bodies through the streets and crowds cheered. Instead of making the barbarians pay, Clinton ordered American troops out. This alerted the region's terrorists that Americans were easy to push around. One of these terrorists was Osama bin Laden. According to the 9/11 commission report, a bin Laden fatwa in 1996 praised the Somali attack because the U.S. "left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you." The report goes on to say that bin Laden was behind the attacks on the American helicopters. Lawrence Wright, in "The Looming Tower," noted that whether he was or not, he thought it important to claim credit.

Despite the fact that this pirate attack is ultimately a failure, it is a failure because of the fortitude and resourcefulness of the crew, not because of anything the Obama administration did. As of this writing, they still haven't done anything in response. Pirates and terrorists around the world are not looking at the crew of MAERSK ALABAMA as a measure of risk for future attacks; they are looking at how the U.S. government will respond as their measure of risk.

IBD is right. This is the first real test of the resolve and mettle of the Obama administration. If Obama fails this test, it will be a major repeat of the first major international mistake of the Clinton administration.

And we all know exactly where that mistake led to.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Somali Pirates Lay Out Another Test
Investor's Business Daily
April 8, 2009

A Look At What Joe Biden Meant Last Sunday And Democrats Resorting To Violence

Joe Biden let slip some very important information last Sunday when he spoke about how Obama would be tested in his first six months of his presidency and that his decisions would be unpopular with the American people.

Well, what would those situations be? And what decisions would be made?

Herb Denenberg of The Bulletin looks at that in his most recent column:

Why would they test his mettle? This was unsaid, but you test someone's mettle when you don't know what he's made of or when you suspect he's weak and you want to start testing for weakness. But here's why Sen. Biden is wrong on the world testing Sen. Obama's mettle. No one has to test his mettle. They know he is weak on foreign policy, and has a heavy tinge of appeasement, retreat, defeat, and surrender - as does the Democratic Party, which nominated him. Our enemies already knows Sen. Obama is weak and soft, as is his party, so our enemies will just proceed with their plans for terrorism and aggression. Why would the Russians want to test his mettle? They saw what he is made of by his reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia. First, Sen. Obama called for restraint on both sides. So the Russians know, that in the face of aggression, instead of taking a firm stand with an ally and innocent victim, Sen. Obama calls for restraint on the part of the victim being invaded. Why test someone who has so clearly flunked his exam? Then the Russians heard Sen. Obama suggest the matter be sent to the Security Council. The Russians now know he is so wet behind the ears on foreign policy that he doesn't even know the Russians have a veto in the Security Council and could make sure nothing happened there. Then the Russians heard Sen. Obama observe that we'd be in a better position to complain about this aggression if we set a good example ourselves. So the Russians know he equates their illegal, unprovoked aggression against Georgia with America's legal, U.N.-sanctioned liberation of Iraq from the murderous Saddam Hussein, the butcher of Baghdad. This tells the Russians he doesn't approve of America using armed force to defend its national interests and he doesn't have the sense to refrain from criticizing his own country in a time of international crisis.

And on Iran, Obama is known for this:

The Iranians would lose no time in attacking one of their neighbors, most likely Israel. Perhaps by then armed with nuclear weapons, they would use them on a neighbor, or threaten to blackmail a neighbor or perhaps even a continent such as Europe, if certain concessions were not forthcoming. Obama would call for restraint, and assure the American people again, as he has already done, that Iran is a tiny country and not a real threat to the U.S. The Iranians know he said this while they were killing American troops in Iraq, sending terrorists and weapons into Iraq and serving as the headquarters of international terrorism. The Iranians know what others have already said - Sen. Obama is a Jimmy-Carter type, only worse. They know how President Carter locked himself in the White House and did not face down international lawlessness after the Iranian took American hostages at our embassy in Teheran. Why test his mettle, when his record suggests an enemy of America can invade, attack, and terrorize with impunity. Remember his reaction to 9/11 - the typical liberal, leftist response. We've got to understand why they did such a terrible thing. Anyone with good judgment would say we've got to kill and defeat all those responsible for this mass murder. When Pastor Rick Warren asked him what he would do about evil, he danced around like a confused college professor. When Sen. McCain was asked the same question, he said, without hesitation, you defeat it. Terrorists would be aware of Sen. Obama's reaction to the first bombing of the World Trade Center. He said you handle it with the legal system and prosecute wrongdoers. I'm sure al-Qaeda is trembling waiting for a grand jury and indictments from Obama? Will that really deter terrorists or just give them a fat laugh? Like Obama, President Clinton believed in the law enforcement approach to terrorism, and that mistake led directly to 9/11.

And Biden should know what it means to be wrong on foreign policy issues. He has made more than his share of mistakes along the way:

Our enemies know how naïve Sen. Obama is on foreign policy, as they know he announced to the world that if he knew where Osama bin Laden was and if he were in Pakistan, he would strike him without permission of that country. Sen. Kit Bond, an intelligence expert whose comments will be discussed in more detail later, says Sen. Obama "doesn't understand how dangerous it would be to destabilize Pakistan and allow their radical fringes to take over." His outburst on this subject betrays a lack of understanding on how to deal with a present ally in a most precarious position. And all the axis of evil would be emboldened knowing that Sen. Obama's key adviser on foreign policy would likely be Sen. Biden, who has a record of being wrong and often weak on almost all questions of foreign policy. Consider a few of his hare-brained judgments: * After Iraq invaded Kuwait, Sen. Biden opposed the first war against Iraq. He apparently was willing to cede the entire Middle East and all of its oil to Saddam Hussein. * Before Sen. McCain succeeded in turning the tide toward American victory in Iraq, Sen. Biden wanted to break Iraq into a group of separate nations that would include a Sunni state, a Shia state and a Kurdish state.

And finally this:

Sen. Bond summarized the whole Obama approach: "He [Obama] dismisses the threat, rewards enemies with summit meetings, abandons allies and then refuses to support trade agreements with vital allies like Colombia, who are fighting off the narco-terrorists."

It will not look good for the United States if Barack Obama gets into the White House. He will invite attacks against innocent Americans and then refuse to effectively respond to those attacks which will, in turn, invite more attacks.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obama Would Weaken, Destroy American Defenses And Bring Challenges
Herb Denenberg
The Bulletin
October 22, 2008

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And here is a news story you will never see in the MSM unless the politcal affiliations were reversed. from Pajames Media:

While the Democrat-leaning media continues to scare undecided voters with bedtime stories about some mythical angry McCain supporter whom nobody has seen, here is a real district attorney’s complaint documenting an unprovoked assault by an enraged Democrat against a McCain volunteer in midtown Manhattan: “Defendant grabbed the sign [informant] was holding, broke the wood stick that was attached to it, and then struck informant in informant’s face thereby causing informant to sustain redness, swelling, and bruising to informant’s face and further causing informant to sustain substantial pain.”

The overly formal document doesn’t mention this important detail: the victim was a small, quiet, middle-aged woman wearing glasses, and the attacker was a loud, angry man who went into orbit at the mere sight of McCain campaign signs. On a Monday afternoon, September 15, 2008, three McCain volunteers were holding campaign signs and distributing leaflets on a busy corner of 51st Street and Lexington Avenue. As they were peacefully talking to each other, they were approached by a man who, in the words of the victim, provided the impression of “a rather benign, doughy-looking guy — not a person I would have expected to assault me.”

Here is a picture of the attacker:



You can access the complete blog entry on-line here:

Obama Supporter Assaults Female McCain Volunteer in New York
Pajamamedia.com
October 17, 2008

Diplomas For The Jihadis? Hasn't Worked Before And It Won't Work Now.

You can always count of Michelle Malkin to find that one little nugget of news, that one little tidbit of information that the lesser jounalists of Old Media will always miss. She found this one during the political firestorm over a front-page cartoon ran by the New Yorker. Michelle notes:

The magazine piece quotes Obama's recommendations for how to stop jihad, which he had previously published in a local Chicago newspaper eight days after 9/11. It's a self-parody of blind, deaf and dumb Kumbaya liberalism: "We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

Well, Michelle gives us some pretty good examples as to why this policy is a failure since we have already tried it and it returned to bite us in the collective rear-end:

Author and National Review Online blogger Mark Steyn's sharp rejoinder to McCain then applies to Obama now: "There's plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme 'extremists' are those who've been most exposed to the west -- and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous -- and unworthy of a serious presidential candidate." Ayman al-Zawahiri didn't need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism and working toward a worldwide caliphate. He has a medical degree. So does former Hamas biggie Abdel al-Rantissi. Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. Suspected al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui, still wanted by the FBI for questioning, is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis. And as I've reported before and must reiterate for the hard of hearing in Washington, lowering academic standards at American colleges helped al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further the jihadi cause. In the early 1980s, he enrolled at tiny Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., which had dropped its English requirements to attract -- ahem -- wealthy Middle Easterners.

This policy of giving Western educations to those who hate the West has been shown to be nothing but a failure. It shouldn't be surprising that Barack Obama would embrace it since he is also embracing the disastrously failed Socialist economic policies of the Carter Administration.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Diplomas Won't Make Jihadis Go Away, Barack
Michelle Malkin
TownHall.com
July 16, 2008