Can you imagine George W. Bush allowing a US Navy destroyer to be held at bay by a few scrawny Somalians stranded in an unfueled lifeboat hundreds of miles from shore? No, me either. Only a Democrat Administration would think that they can negotiate with a bunch of superstitious stone-age terrorists who think they’re going to die the minute their hostage is released. After all, they reneged on their deal with the crew of the Maersk Alabama in the prisoner exchange that was supposed to take place before the Navy arrived. Why should they expect different treatment from our side?<\/p>\n
I flashed on a similar situation over 15 years ago when in the Fall of 1994, the Haitian generals held an entire nation hostage. At one point, President Clinton dispatched warships to Port-au-Prince. Shirtless and shoeless Haitian supporters of the generals stood on the docks shouted and waved their machetes at the hulking gray ships. Eventually, the Navy didn’t dock and left the port. The Haitians immediately celebrated a great victory over the United States military.<\/p>\n
Clinton became so frustrated that he sent Jimmy Carter to straighten things out – and the 82d Airborne Division orbited Pope Air Force Base waiting for the word to go. Instead of using his military, Clinton paid US taxpayer dollars to the generals to leave Haiti – and Haiti is a tropical paradise and tourist destination today because of it. Huh? It’s not? Nothing has changed? How could I have missed that?<\/p>\n
Halfway around the world, with their compadres streaming towards the tiny lifeboat with it’s single hostage, shirtless and shoeless pirates are holding off the US Navy. For three days now, the US has been negotiating and time is running short before more ships with more hostages arrive to complicate the whole situation. <\/p>\n
Why doesn’t Obama just drop Jimmy Carter into the lifeboat and exchange him for Captain Phillips? That’d solve two problems at once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"