1) Courageous obviously, but wasn't it also stupid?
All ships from America or Europe that are destined to ports in eastern Africa have to either pass the piracy-infested Gulf of Aden, or go all the way around Cape Hope, which would be immensly time-consuming and expensive. In other words, there is really no other choice but to take the risk, as hundreds of ships do every day. The crew could probably have decided to not do that trip at all, but saying they were "stupid" to do it seems too harsh to me.
2) Why is this "mothership" allowed to exist?
Good question. I don't know any specifics, but I would assume that there's not only one, but many pirate "motherships".
One reason for not just blowing them up might be that we don't want to kill people based on mere suspicion, and that only pirates involved in an actual offensive act would be attacked. So the pirates would have to be "caught in the act". Anyway, killing the pirates in the absence of immediate danger to someone else's life could still be seen as disproportionate.
Another reason might be that pirates are currently still holding a high number of hostages, the well-being of whom is taken into consideration when dealing with the "motherships".
3) Cool point slipped into that NYT "Week in Review" article.
I guess there's a difference between "Christian religion" and "Judea-Christian philosophy". It should be widely accepted that the U.S. isn't founded on any particular religion. One could still argue that its founding was based on a particular "philosophy". This is intrinsically hard to disprove, so from a scientific point of view the statement is pretty pointless.
The separation of state and church is a separate issue, and I think again, the majority of even the religious right would generally argue in favor of it.
by
OldGerman on
04/14/2009 03:27:21 AM EST
