Blackbeard,
Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, Henry Morgan.
What do they all have in common?
Well, yes they were all pirates, but what I’m driving at is that they
were all pirates with style.
They weren’t just another boatload of “skinnies” all hopped up on khat;
they had a code. As we’ve seen recently
we still have pirates. And, we do have
many stylish things now-a-days, but modern pirates are not among them. Which brings me to the central question of
this harrumph: what the hell ever
happened to pirates?
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| Yaaarrrr!!!!! Give up yer booty!!! |
Back
in the day, piracy was a brotherhood and every man, from the captain down to
the lowliest sailor pulled their weight and took the same chances. Captains were elected and if they didn’t
measure up they could be replaced. They
displayed the jolly roger (personalized by the captains) as a signal to ships
to heave to & surrender. Only when
a fight was put up by the captured ship was the red “death” flag hoisted and
the crew massacred, otherwise they had the choice to join the pirates or be
cast adrift. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the
greatest thing to be put in a longboat and set adrift but the point is that
they had a chance to make it to a port.
Today,
some tribal leader sends out a bunch of drugged up teenagers in a zodiac to
waylay ships. You know, you can’t even
call them real sailors. You tell me
where on a zodiac do you find the poop deck?
I’m also sure not a single skinny manning the .50 cal or totin’ the RPG
could tie a sheepshank. And democracy
among the crews? Sorry boys, the
“Cap’n” is staying onshore, beyond the usual reach of law enforcement where he
can safely transfer his money between secret accounts, sip a grey goose, and
enjoy the company of a lass or two he had imported from Europe. That boatload of skinnies he’s sending out
with AK’s and RPG’s is expendable as far as he’s concerned. Oh, and no cool flags on those zodiacs
either.
Speaking
of law enforcement, why are we treating modern pirates like a bunch of wanna be
Bernie Madoffs? Why are FBI agents
cuffing these clowns and flying them back to a court in New York? Ummm, do we still have a Navy? You know, they call some of their ships
“destroyers” for a reason… because they’re good at destroying other ships. And against a zodiac? Dang, they don’t even need to drop a 5
inch/54 round on those little things; just JFK over them at flank speed and
them skinnies are going for a swim… until they get pulled under the keel into
the props. Problem solved. And, as far as pirates being brought into
New York; the only ones I want to see going there are ones the destroyers have
hanging from the yardarms when they pull into port. After hanging for a couple of weeks at sea & rounding the
cape from East Africa, they’ll be pretty ripe.
Probably pretty well picked over by the seagulls too. Put that on Youtube, FOX News, & BBC and
I think the prospective pool of volunteers will dry up. And, if it doesn’t, well we’ve got plenty of
yardarms in the Navy.
All
we really need is the political will to do the right thing. I know, I know; trying to get this White
House to do the right thing in foreign affairs is like trying to get Bill
Clinton to keep his fly zipped. Damn
near impossible. But, we really knew
that from the Gitmo… I’m sorry, the git-go, anyway, didn’t we?
Why
our Special Forces haven’t been dropping into East African pirate strongholds
and “persuading” the leaders to cease & desist their illegal pirate
activities is beyond me. There should
be dozens of these clowns sporting new ear-to-ear grins given to them by our
guys, courtesy of “K-Bar” & “Cold Steel,” free of charge. And if that is a little too messy for some
of you then I suggest using a nice, new, clean, B61 set around 10 kilotons;
free delivery by next-day air… no returns.
Harrumph…
It is certainly way past the time that something is done about the piracy problem. You can bet if that fruitloop blogger Perez Hilton went on the air babbling about the complete lack of style, there would be much more of an outcry to do something about them. The Marines cleaned up the Barbary Coast once, let them do it again, you know they would love to do it. What is so difficult about cleaning this problem up? Forget taking prisoners, those scrawny, hopped up bastards will eventually run out of boats if we sink everything that comes off the coast. Kill them all and let Allah sort them out. (That can be used in a lot of circumstances)
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ReplyDelete...I'm surprised Sharpshooter knows who Perez Hilton is...
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