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THE PRO SNIPING ARGUMENT

People of good will everywhere rejoice in the fact that the captain of the Mersk Alabama Richard Phillips was rescued by US forces from his pirate captors. Of the 4 pirates, 1 surrendered to get medical treatment and when the remaining 3 pointed an AK-47 at Captain Phillips, they were killed instantly by three snipers from the navy destroyer Bainbridge. While many will argue that the crew should have been armed in the first place (and that is a valid and legitimate argument), we see how proficient and professional these men are at what they do. On the other hand, the French just stormed the yacht without setting up a plan and planning their mission, and we see how that turned out (it resulted in one of the hostages being killed). They waved their guns wildly and failed in their rescue attempt. John Woodin is a famous basketball coach who is always mentioned around the NCAA championships (since he has the most NCAA victories of any coach in history). He was known to tell his players these famed words of advice “be quick, but don’t rush”. This was what the naval command at the authorization of President Obama did so efficiently; they were quick, but they didn’t rush…that’s why they are pros.

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MORE TAG THAN RAG

People seem shocked that the Somali pirates (who in their own eyes are such a rag tag outfit) could be such a serious threat and so disruptive. Yet we fail to see that besides for the element of surprise they also are surprisingly well armed. When they say “tag” you’re it. Additionally, we fail to remember the size of the ocean and how hard patrolling it has to be. To be clear, the size of the body of water that is under constant attack by pirates is as large as the entire east coast of the US. So as we begin to learn about fighting these threats, lets not take it lightly and remember that the pirates are more tag than rag.

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