The battle continues for the crew of the Maersk Alabama.  The most recent reports have the crew taking back the ship but the pirates managed to kidnap the American captain, Richard Phillips, as the the pirates’ attack boat is docked along side the larger vessel.  Meanwhile the pirates and the US Navy have called in for reinforcements with this possibly turning into the Third Great Pirate War.

There are also reports that the Captain Phillips jumped from the pirate ship and attempted to swim back to safety.

The struggle goes on.

Update:

Thomas Jefferson knew a thing or two about defeating pirates.  More on the Barbary Wars and the irony of our response to modern pirates:

The navy sent the USS Bainbridge to the pirate incident. Commodore Bainbridge was the commander of the task force that President Jefferson sent to fight the Barbary pirate incidents in Tripoli. Commodore Bainbridge is probably spinning in his grave at how feckless our response is today. In 1803-05, Jefferson sent Captain Eaton to conduct a covert action attack against the pirates and their infrastructure and leadership on the beach. Captain Eaton assembled a handful of of U.S. Marines and a group of Arab, Greek and North African mercenaries and attacked the Basha from the desert, overland side, while the Naval task force bombarded the sea side. And the State Department authorized a “payment” to the Basha, paid by that rat Tobias Lear.

It was the first combined covert action, U.S. Navy operational action against a foreign enemy. Unconventional warfare, against an unconventional enemy. What a novel idea. We handled things better 200 years ago!

Thomas Jefferson, Pirate Fighter.

This aggression will not stand.

For the first time Pirates of the coast of Somali have seized an United States=flagged vessel that was headed to Kenya from Djibouti.  At least 20 American crew members are currently being held hostage.  This is the sixth ship that has been hijacked this week off the Horn of Africa.

This nation was built on the destruction of Piracy, it’s time we get back to our roots.

UPDATE:

American crew members have retaken control of the ship.  One pirate is believed to be in custody.

God Damn Right.

I have to admit that I’m kind of at the end of the line when it comes to these god damn pirates.  It’s not that complicated, we’ve been down this road before.  The marines even wrote a theme song about it once.  We basically need to send a boat full of marines to Somali, let said marines destroy their own boat to demonstrate their seriousness and then basically fight the pirates in hand-to-hand combat.  Of course there will be casualties but this blatant disregard for international law is getting to be pretty absurd.  I know, I know… it’s a vast body of water we’re talking about.  Well, so is the Atlantic and that didn’t stop Robert Maynard from tracking down Edward Teach in 1718.

This has to end.

Let’s just hope the Vikings don’t start raiding Europe again.