It wasn’t too long ago that the U.S. Navy was in the news after a number of antipiracy operations off the Horn of Africa. Cruising the high seas off distant continents! Dispensing justice and steel to lawless pirates! Defending the innocent! Pow! Bam! Neat stuff. Go Navy!

Apart from a dim harkening back to romanticized old-time naval adventures, it was just plain nice to hear tales of American military power being used against some pretty unambiguously bad guys. It was with great dismay, then, that I read an LA Times article describing a new naval policy that might charitably be described as “emasculated”.

U.S. sailors kept close watch on a 6-week-old drama more than 2,500 miles away involving pirates from Somalia and a Danish merchant vessel… called the Svitzer Korsakov…

As long as the pirates didn’t mistreat the crew and continued to negotiate a ransom with the ship’s owner, the U.S. would not intervene. But if the pirates became violent or deprived crew members of food and water, heavily armed U.S. sailors were prepared to storm the Svitzer Korsakov and free the crew.

“We want the pirates to know there will be consequences if they escalate,” said Rear Adm. Mark Balmert… On March 19, the standoff finally ended: The pirates released the ship after a reported $700,000 ransom was paid.

Yes, that’s right: you’ll kidnap and rob sailors at gunpoint nicely, or, by thunder, you’ll have Uncle Sam to deal with!

“We’re like a cop walking a beat,” said Capt. David Adler, commander of the guided-missile cruiser Port Royal in the Persian Gulf.

Now, I don’t know about you, Captain Adler, but if my local policemen had a policy of intervening in robberies, carjackings, and home invasions only when somebody got beaten, and let the perps walk if they “behaved themselves” while committing their crimes, I probably wouldn’t consider them very effective. What retard formulated this strategy?