Karma, Dude

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people:

Five of the Somali pirates who released a hijacked oil-laden Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a reported $3 million ransom after their small boat capsized, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said Saturday.

Galrahn wonders:

Considering all the pictures of the money drop on the US Navy website, what are the odds that we were watching the pirates flee the tanker? Pretty good I’d bet.

In other words, the coalition forces were almost certainly watching the pirates and saw the accident occur, then intentionally decided for whatever reason not to offer any assistance. Is it inhumane to let pirates drown? Did we intentionally not help them knowing that we would end up with pirate prisoners? Don’t dismiss that last part, the political and legal framework is so confusing it is probably an easy decision for a Naval officer to let pirates drown and die than rescue them and put them in jail.

This last bit is particularly complex. I’ve argued before that we should take steps to arrest pirates after paying a ransom, as the French have done on several occasions. If that’s not the plan, however, then it’s really unclear at which point a warship should “render aid” to ransom carrying pirates in distress, given that it would be absurd NOT to arrest such pirates once they’re actually on board.

Also, I’m not as familiar as I should be with the international law regarding rescuing sailors shipwrecked or otherwise in distress. Certainly, practice in World War II varied widely.

Oh, and this is really, really stupid.