Pirate exhaustion

Posted By Annie Lowrey Monday, April 13, 2009 - 8:24 AM Share

Mike Allen of Politico's Playbook fame seconds our idea of renaming the pirates. "Pirates go from curiosity to crisis for 1600 and the Pentagon," his headline screamed, the suggestion of renaming them "maritime terrorists" within.

Matt Yglesias criticizes the letter of the suggestion, if not the spirit, with the rather unimpeachable logic that pirates are...pirates.

The point I made last week -- that calling pirates "pirates" allows for a certain romanticization and fueled a media frenzy which too often overlooked the realities of the situation and the circumstance of failed-state Somalia -- thankfully seems passe.

This weekend's rescue, which involved U.S. naval warships, millions of dollars, and pirate and civilian deaths, spurred an examination of the why and how behind the pirates. The sheen's worn off. They're criminals and a security concern. They redouble Somalia's problems.

Or, as someone will inevitably put it somewhere on the internet: pirates totally jumped the shark.

EXPLORE:AFRICA, DRUGS & CRIME, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, LAW, MILITARY, POLITICS, SECURITY, SOMALIA, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

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CURIOUS OBSERVER

9:48 AM ET

April 13, 2009

I'm torn on this...

This recovering journalist is torn.

On the one hand, "terrorism" typically implies some sort of political grievance. These guys, by contrast, appear to be in it just for the money.

Or are they? The piracy is in part an outgrowth of the seaborne militias Somalis formed when foreign ships started dumping their toxic waste off the Somali coast and wrecking the local fishing industry. But this salient fact has been lost in most of the coverage of the phenomenon, even I daresay on this blog.

DEPARTUREGATE

1:25 PM ET

April 13, 2009

I agree with Yglesias, there

I agree with Yglesias, there is already a word that describes these men...pirates. It's not the word's fault that piracy left the immediate consciousness of the Western media about 200 years ago. Pirates were an even more serious, violent, deadly and expensive problem in their heyday than they are now. Maybe people will remember that because 'maritime terrorists' just sounds like an attempt to gloss over the activity.

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