PIRATES AND PUSSIES

The first thing to do regarding these ridiculous Somali pirates running around the Indian Ocean in these tiny outboard motorized skiffs hijacking $100 million tankers is read Civilizational Confidence, written two years ago (December 2006).

It tells the story of how George Washington for the entire eight years of his presidency paid ransom and extortion money to the Barbary Pirates along the north coast of Africa.  Then how finally Thomas Jefferson as president sent the Marines “to the shores of Tripoli” and took care of the problem.

It also explains what is “the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future: civilizational confidence.”   And that the collapse of civilizational confidence is suicidal masochism.

So we have reached the bottom of that masochistic barrel, with pirates in the ocean and pussies in the White House.  Note the latter reference is also plural, for it’s hard to imagine how the future president could be more of a pussy than the one we have now.

Let’s take this example. The Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group of the US Navy is on deployment in the Indian Ocean-Persian Gulf.  On its ships are some 2,200 Marines who are bored out of their minds doing nothing.  While two-bit pirates with two-bit guns are terrorizing international shipping right over their shoulders, they are spending their time doing training exercises with Saudi Marines.

Such training consists of Saudi Marines sitting around and watching our Marines train.  They are ludicrously unorganized, undisciplined, and weak, both physically and mentally.

You are the president.  There are 2,200 members of the greatest fighting force in the entire world at your disposal, aboard Navy ships armed with cruise missiles, helicopter gunships, and fighter jets, right in the area of this piracy.  You know exactly where the bases of the pirates are located.  All you have to do is pick up the phone and order the bases wiped off the face of the earth, and this problem of piracy is gone – as in eliminated  – within 24 hours.

And you don’t do it?  You pick up the phone and talk to lawyers and State Dept. squishes instead who hand-wring about “what do we do with the pirates once they’re captured?”, you don’t respond by saying “I want them killed not captured!” and you do nothing.  You are a pussy.

Why worry about how bad the next commander-in-chief is going to be when the one we already have is so pathetic?

The one place where our current president has shown the courage to all-out win against evil is where he has:  Iraq.  For some inexplicable reason, he has not shown that courage elsewhere – and his refusal to take down these Somali proto-hominid pirates is the latest sad example.

Let’s now talk about another example of pirates and pussies – that being the beggars from Detroit groveling at the feet of the Pirates of Capitol Hill who caused Detroit’s problems in the first place.

Let’s look at Democrats like Barney Frank and his colleagues and predecessors as pirates hijacking giant industries.  Politicians as pirates running an extortion racket.

What was so grating about the begging farce by the Detroit auto CEOs on the Hill this week was their rank cowardice, their total capitulation to the extortion.  Not one had the courage to explain to the Dems that it was their rules and regulations – like CAFE standards – and bottomless support for UAW union extortion that are the root of the problem.

Not one of them said to the Dems, “If you guys in government will just get out of our way, we can actually make some money, for ourselves, our shareholders, and our workers.”

But that’s not the way it works in Washington, which has so much onerous control over business now that if you complain, the rules and control just get worse.  Such a system attracts CEOs who beg for subsidies and protection from competition.

Our current president has done little to lift Washington’s burden off business, to rid the land of Washington piracy any more than he has of high seas piracy.  The most he’s done is not make Washington piracy a lot worse – which is precisely what his successor is going to do.

Two years ago I thought I smelled a “faint whiff in the breeze” of civilizational confidence coming in 2007.  I hoped that it wouldn’t be “gone with the wind,” and now at the end of 2008 we have devastating confirmation that it is.

Bush can’t buck this utter collapse of civilizational confidence and Zero (aka NMP) epitomizes its collapse.  That’s why his election was such an act of masochism.  What else can American voters now expect but a world run by pirates when they behave like pussies?