This story is based on two sources, the U.K. Telegraph yesterday and CBN News today.
I have no idea who said, “When American has a weak President, the world is a more dangerous place,” but it is obviously true. Yesterday four Americans were killed by Somali pirates. Their ship was hijacked about 300 miles off the Somali coast.
The small yacht was manned by Jean and Scott Adam, the yacht’s owners, and two of their friends, Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle.
According the the CBN News article:
“The boat belonged to California couple Scott and Jean Adam, who’d been living on the ship and sailing the seas since 2002. According to their website, their mission was to travel to ports around the world distributing Bibles and “seeking fertile ground for the Word.””
The pirates hijacked the yacht and U. S. Naval Warships followed the pirates and the hostages at a distance. After gun shots were heard from the yacht’s crew quarters, armed commandos sped from a US Navy vessel less than 600 yards away. Unfortunately, the hostages had already been shot.
On December 25, 2010, a website called Neptune Maritime Security published a list of the ships currently held by Somali pirates. Please follow the link to see the list.
According to information at goafrica.about.com:
“According to a recent BBC report, Somali pirates seized a record 1,181 hostages in 2010, and were paid many millions of dollars in ransom.”
Because Somalia does not have a stable government or an economy that supports its people, piracy is a very attractice profession. Just as Afghanistan has tribal leaders, Somalia has overlords who supervise the pirates and share the booty. Because of the general lawlessness of the society, a young man may be given a choice of becoming a pirate or being shot by one of the people supervising the pirates. When I think about this, I am really grateful that I do not run America–I might be having one of my ‘nuclear parking lot’ days.
Piracy off the African coast cannot be allowed to continue. At some point the nations of the world who believe in law and order are going to have to combine their naval resources and wipe out the pirates. Unfortunately, a lot of innocent hostages will die when that happens, but until we are willing to do that, the piracy will continue.