Conservative

By John Fay

Somalia may be the best example of what the world was like before governments. It is a nation so bereft of anything we would naturally associate with nations, that the word barely even qualifies. It has no real central government, rather, a collection of ruthless warlords vying for power. Women have essentially no rights but are still apt to outlive the males by six years because men keep killing each other.

We in the United States were recently forced to acknowledge the harsh reality of such a world when several of our citizens were kidnapped on the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, and the story that ensued should teach us some lessons about the realities of life in a dangerous world.

We all know how the story ends, of course. Navy seals, on the orders of President Obama, simultaneously shot three pirates and rescued the ship’s captain, becoming instant heroes and endowing Obama with the gravitas of strong leadership. Let us not forget, however, that when leaders make decisions, they are often life and death decisions, not life or death decisions.

This means that when someone lives, someone else has to die; an American citizen is alive today because three other men are dead. They may have deserved it, it may have been necessary, but they are nonetheless dead.

In contemplating this, I couldn’t help but remember a story from the Bible. When David asked God for permission to build a temple, God forbade him to do so because he fought to defend the people of Israel from evil. It was not morally wrong for David to shed blood, but in some sense, spiritually defiling. This, I believe, is the price presidents and warriors alike must pay. This is why I believe that soldiers are truly heroes, because by serving in warfare, they have voluntarily given up their innocence so that we can maintain our own.

The first lesson is for Obama: Being president of the United States is not a blessing, it is a burden. This victory will not be enough. We will need to establish a major naval presence in the East African region. We will need to continue to engage these pirates on the high seas and in their shore bases because they will continue to attack our citizens until the high casualty rate renders the prospect unprofitable for them.

The reason why our leaders and military were able to act is because the ship crew acted first. They realized that though we have leaders who make decisions, often we must take matters into our own hands. They captured one of the pirates, and the captain sacrificed his freedom for his crew.

In normal society, we are trained to be passive in the face of violence. This ignores the philosophical truth that whenever two people are together and one is passive and the other is violent, violence, not peace, will be the result. When faced with evil, we must be prepared to abandon passivity — to abandon, our own innocence in order to protect our friends. We can be proud of what happened this week, but when we are done patting ourselves on the back, this incident teaches a sober lesson we are often too quick to forget.

Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Liberal

By Greg Ryan

The capture by pirates of Captain Richard Philips of the Maersk Alabama off the Horn of Africa and his subsequent rescue by the U.S. Navy has cast a spotlight on the growing problem of piracy in the region and the ways we should combat it, but has failed to generate significant attention for the true culprit in this crisis. The only questions being asked are about how to treat the symptom of piracy and not the disease of poverty and lawlessness.

It has been the greatest question of the entire postwar era — far more important than capitalism versus communism.

“Development,” “nation building,” “liberalization,” “good governance” — all of the theories, buzzwords, interventions and good intentions have come and gone and largely failed. In vogue now is the idea that everything the First World has done over that last century to help the poorer people of the world has delivered far more harm on the balance. This harm is, of course, itself dwarfed by the deliberate destruction and exploitation perpetrated on most of the planet by the wealthy and powerful minority.

Even if there was agreement on the causes of poverty and lawlessness in places like Somalia — where those four teenagers had such meager prospects for a legitimate future and so little to lose that they turned to piracy — we would only be marginally closer to a solution.

Though Somalia possesses an internationally recognized government, this government does not possess Somalia. It is less a country and more of a geographical area with ambitiously specific borders. Within those borders, there is such a crisis of basic sustenance and security, and such a deficit of opportunity and surplus of weapons as to make taking on a container ship seem like a neat idea.

The poverty and powerlessness in Somalia has a hundred twins with a hundred different faces all over this world. Barack Obama’s message of hope was taken by many in the Third World to apply to everyone, not just Americans. Something — many things — about Obama resonated with the world’s poor and disenfranchised peoples. Yet, solving the problem of global poverty was, among all those hopes I have for the world, left uninspired by Obama’s election. Changing the direction of U.S. global economic policy or reforming our dubious aid strategy would pit his administration against all of the most powerful and moneyed interests in government.

The three simultaneous head shots which killed the three pirates holding Philips demonstrate how in each individual encounter with an enemy, the U.S. will always prevail, even while struggling in the large war. The solutions we have heard for dealing with the piracy crisis — and sometimes with Somalia itself — have concentrated on the use of this amazing power we possess. Thinking we can fight our way out of every problem is an American legacy we should be loath to repeat again. Unfortunately, addressing the issue properly would be to end poverty, spread democracy, and ensure safety, plenty and equality for all people. So far, no one has figured out how.

Reach columnist Greg Ryan at opinion@dailyuw.com.

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