Adventure On The High Seas

While the White House and U.S. Navy “closely monitored” the situation, American crew members of the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama used anti-piracy training to regain control of their vessel, although Somali pirates did manage to make off with the ship’s captain.

Still, as was the case with the response to Hurricane Katrina, the private sector took decisive action while government sat around with a not so bright look on its face.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, screenwriters swooned at the high seas drama, which is continuing to play out today as the U.S. Navy finally showed up to help negotiate the release of the captain.

The Navy is “in command of the situation,” a Maersk spokesman told reporters. “We are coordinating with the Navy and all the governmental organizations involved in this crisis.”

Like the FBI, for example, which is sending its “hostage negotiators” in.

Sheesh. If the U.S. military was really in “command of (this) situation,” we’d still have twenty hostages, not one. Not to mention a captive ship.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama obviously didn’t have time for all that.

And so this group of highly-motivated, pissed-off people said “screw this” and rose up, pure and simple.

Refusing to back down and wait for the Navy or a million-dollar ransom to gain their freedom (and the release of the ship’s humanitarian cargo) this crew decided to band together and beat these thugs down.

They didn’t sit back and negotiate, or let diplomacy take its course, or wait for these terrorists to get another infusion of ransom cash from a cowing international community, they said said “let’s roll” and took care of their business.

Like the passengers on United 93 – who also didn’t wait for an Act of Congress when they stormed the terrorists in the cockpit and prevented that airliner from crashing into the U.S. Capitol on 9/11 – these brave Americans proved once again that there’s nothing wrong with our country, just our inept leaders.

And yes, it feels damn good to finally throw that “brave Americans” cliche out there. It’s been too long since we’ve done that.

Seriously, do you think President Barack “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” Hussein would have given the green light to something like this?

Never. Not in a million years.

After all, that would be fighting a “War on Terror,” and we’re not doing that anymore.

But beyond international politics, this is about getting stuff done – something the federal government forgot how to do a long time ago.

It’s like Dark Helmet said in Spaceballs.

“Why are we always preparing to go? Just go …”

Damn right.

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