The Archway

Issue date: 4/17/09 Section: Opinion

While it may conjure up a reference to Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, the hostage situation that played out over this past week is very real. Real to the point that it should have been officially addressed months and/or years ago when it was originally an issue. Although it is true that this is the first noted example of a hijacking and hostage situation involving an American ship, it is not the first instance involving American ships in general. The severity and circumstances of this attack by the pirates obviously is a just reason for the commotion, but what of the escalation of piracy that has been occurring throughout the last several years?

There have been recent calls for nations that use the Gulf of Aden and other bodies of water directly adjacent to Somalia to use military support to prevent such acts of piracy from occurring. It appears that measures like this have had little effect on the pirates since the number of instances since this most recent call has been increasing.

As this recent hostage situation has shown, this is in fact a problem, although the American media and government were apparently reluctant to act upon the fact that this was a rising issue affecting various nations, including our own. There has been some reference to the ongoing issue in the region, but for the most part there has been minimal coverage or government involvement with this issue prior to this incident. Granted, the ship was American and so was the captain, which obviously plays into the consideration for why the issue has now become a main talking point.

This situation has in fact been a known issue for years and only in the past few months have the piracy incidents been escalating at an alarming rate. So what does this knowledge say of priority, or the lack of response time. To claim that this is an issue now assumes that the event, which occurred just last week, was the breaking point of the situation, from which action is needed to be taken by the government. Personally, I find it quite coincidental that an American ship being hijacked presents the beginnings of a global issue that requires immediate attention. How long would it have taken for the government to proclaim this is such an issue if in fact an American ship had not been the subject of this attack? That will never be known and is a meaningless question, but it points out the fact that while many countries had been struggling with these pirates, the US balked at the notion that these pirates could affect them in the future. Now that we are involved something will happen, but its effectiveness and how it will be implemented is still a question.

Continued...

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