Barry and the Pirates–Obama’s Excellent Adventure (Update)
By Larry Johnson on April 13, 2009 at 11:40 PM in Current Affairs
(bumped up from early afternoon Monday)
My position is unchanged–Barack Obama merits full praise and credit for being the Commander-in-Chief responsible for Sunday’s rescue of Captain Phillips off the coast of Somalia. If the hostage crisis had lingered on for weeks unresolved Obama would have been justly criticized for weak and vacillating leadership. Or if Captain Phillips had died during the rescue attempt Obama would have been vilified for acting recklessly. So give the man his due and stop being childish and churlish. (If you check out the articles linked at Memeorandum you will not find much in the way of news. What an appalling amount of vacuous commentary.)
I want to touch on a variety of issues, including who issued orders for the attack and the responsibility of Maersk for this mess. Let’s start with the issue of whether or not Barack Obama issued the order to shoot.
Obama did not order the SEALs to fire. The SEALs were on board the USS Bainbridge in response to a Deployment Order issued under the authority of President Obama and signed out by Secretary of Defense Gates. In addition, the authority of the on-scene Commander–the U.S. military officer in charge of the operation–was spelled out in an Execution Order, which gave the Commander his Rules of Engagement and guidance for a variety of scenarios. President Obama did provide very specific direction to the U.S. military forces–i.e., the pirates were not to be allowed to reach land and Captain Phillips was not going to be removed from the lifeboat by the pirates. Pay close attention to the press conference yesterday on the question of authority versus order:
QUESTION: Admiral, Justin again from Fox. it’s been reported that the order to take action came from President Obama. Is that accurate, did the order come from the top, and would you say that action was needed because the ship was getting closer to shore? Was that also another reason that the timing was now for this rescue effort?
GORTHNEY: Our authority came, you’re correct, our authorities came directly from the president. And the number one authority for incidents if we were going to respond was if the captain’s life was in immediate danger. And that is the situation in which our sailors acted.
QUESTION: Admiral, a couple of questions. First of all, a quick follow-up on that one. But that was a standing authority from the president. He wasn’t on the phone with the skipper of the “Bainbridge” saying, oh, yes, go ahead and take the shot.
GORTHNEY: Correct. That’s correct. Yes.
QUESTION: Also, if you could help us understand a little better about how this all went down. Were the three pirates in the capsule on the lifeboat or outside? Where was Captain Phillips at the time this was going on? And where were the sharp shooters? In other words, did they make themselves visible and available for the sharp shooters to then take the shot?
GORTHNEY: You are correct that – you are correct that there were standing orders that if he was at risk and we determined that he was under imminent danger, to go ahead and take decisive action. The intent of the entire time was a deliberate, slow deliberate process to let the negotiation process work itself out to a nonviolent end. And unfortunately, that did not occur.
The specifics of where everybody was, I do not have at this particular time, but they would not have been able to take the shots if the captain was anywhere at risk from being hit by one of our snipers.
QUESTION: If I could just follow-up. Was this an actual assault by somebody like the Navy Seals on the lifeboat itself, or was this a target of opportunity? Understanding that they presented a standing threat to the captain’s life, was this a target of opportunity for those sharp shooters?
GORTHNEY: I want to make one thing perfectly clear, that the on-scene commander determined that the captain was in imminent danger. If he was not in imminent danger, they were not suppose to take this sort of action, they were suppose to let the negotiation process worked it out. The on-scene commander took it as the captain was imminent danger and then made that decision and he had the authority to make that decision and he had seconds to make that decision.
Obama allowed the crisis action response system to work. He did his job and, if things had gone wrong, he would have been blamed. So I repeat, he gets full credit for being in charge even though it was a SEAL unit that executed the operation.
Barack Obama ought to send Maersk a bill for the cost of the rescue operation. Maersk is a culprit and partly responsible for this incident. Why? I have been informed by a knowledgeable source that Maersk had ordered its ships to reduce speed at sea in order to save on fuel and ultimately money. The ships were ordered not to exceed 14 knots. So what? If a ship is traveling at a speed of at least 15 knots it is almost impossible for pirates in a small boat to board the vessel. When traveling at 15 knots or greater these ships put out a large bow wave, which prevents a small boat from getting alongside a ship. That leaves the stern as the only point of access, which usually is too high above the water line and easier to defend as the only point of access. A crew on deck can easily use a charged fire hose to wash off any pirates trying to board their ship at a speed of 15 knots or higher.
The policy of Maersk to order its fleet to reduce speeds, especially in high risk piracy areas off the coast of Somalia, is at best negligent. When you couple that fact with the decision of Maersk officials to rebuff requests by the U.S. Government in March of this year to adopt additional security measures then you have a fact pattern that points to culpability in my book. I don’t know if this violates any law or creates a tort liability but it sure violates the law of common sense.
Obama is discovering, as did Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, that terrorism makes you relevant and successes against pirates and terrorists works like a double dose of viagra on a man with a floppy package. In this case an erection that lasts for more than four hours is not a bad thing.
Now what? Two short term solutions. In tandem with NATO and the UN, the U.S. should push to implement a convoy system to escort ships through the most dangerous areas. This is a short term fix only. In addition, key harbors along the Somali coast should be blockaded and all ships exiting Somali waters stopped and searched. All weapons on board Somali ships should be seized. The world’s negligence over the last three years (and the Bush Administration shares the blame) allowed the Somali clans to run wild in hijacking vessels and earning millions in ransom. It is now time to draw a line in the sand (how about set up warning buoys off shore?) and put the Somali clans on notice that the K-Mart Blue Light special on the sea lanes is no longer available.
If Obama fails to pursue sound policies to shut down the pirates then he will shoulder the blame for future attacks. He can no longer pretend he did not know. Until then he has a right to celebrate this victory over pirates, no matter how rag-tag. Obama made the right decisions and let the professionals work their magic.
UPDATE–The knucklehead writing under the moniker, “OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS,” is anything but objective and flat out ignorant on issues of analysis. Let me highlight one of his more stupid “claims:”
From another military personnel who blogged what happen:
“Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort.
What should have been a standoff lasting only hours — as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location — became an embarrassing four-day-and-counting standoff between a rag-tag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.
On Friday, April 9, as the standoff reached the end of its third day, I called on President Obama to take action to free the American hostage from his Somali captors. I outlined three possible operational tactics that could be used to do so; number 1 was the following:
The so-called “military” blogger betrays his complete lack of understanding about how Special Operations forces are alerted and how they deploy. I know because I work with them. They do not have magic powers and we have not yet developed teleport capabilities like Star Trek that can instantly move people from one point to another. No boys and girls, you have to be given orders and then you have to load an airplane and then the plane has to fly from a point in the United States to the destination. The notion that this is a mere “four” hour event to be solved by on-scene personnel is fucking lunacy and I challenge any so-called military expert to show up here in true name and make such a claim. You assholes who hide behind false names are cowards and wannabees. You do not know what you are talking about.
Once the SEALs who carried out this mission were alerted to deploy, which was a decision that went from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the White House as a recommendation, add on at least 24 hours. Some news reports claim the SEALS rubber-ducked in (i.e., dropped boats from a plane and parachuted to the boats). That is one possibility for at least part of the team. It also is possible that the SEAL snipers were off-loaded at a forward staging base and put on a helicopter, which subsequently transported them to the Bainbridge. Bottomline is that the SEALS did not get on scene in condition to operate until Saturday morning at the earliest.
And let’s remember that the SEALS, while they have all of the endearing charm of a rugby team, are not wild-eyed cowboys. They get on station, they take up observation/sniper positions (and remember they do this in a way that the pirates on the lifeboat cannot see them) and start collecting information. The get into place with emergency assault authority but do not start firing until they have clear targets and can take out all of the bad guys with minimal risk to the hostage. There was no delay in this operation and these anonymous blogging assholes who claim otherwise are exaggerating their experience and their credentials. That particularly applies to this bozo writing under the name, “Objective Analysis.”
by Ronald Scott
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