By now you’ve read one or more stories about the increasing levels of piracy on Africa’s east coast, brought into the spotlight by the recent capture of a Saudi oil tanker.
Piracy is, of course, simply a specific form of theft, a vice that like all basic vices will be with us to the end of time. Sometimes there is a fine line between state military conflict and piracy, as the case of Sir Francis Drake attests (to the English, a hero and nobleman; to the Spanish, a pirate). The problem of piracy along the African coast has plagued American shipping for as long as the nation has existed: One of the earliest missions undertaken by the US Marine Corps was an assault on the infamous bandit havens of the Barbary Coast (remembered still in the Corps’ anthem as “the shores of Tripoli”).
What I found striking about this particular story on the current problem was the sheer breadth of cooperation in the outlawry, evidently without compunction. In the Somali region highlighted, seemingly everyone, from small businessmen, to government officials, to the “mother of five,” views piracy as a positive feature of local life. On display is the absence of elements of a moral culture necessary for a free and functional society, such as deference to the rule of law and respect for property rights. Granted that the culpability of any number of players may be diminished by the harsh realities affecting an impoverished nation without a functioning central government, it is still a depressing picture of indifference to the common good in pursuit of self interest. Would that the modern-day pirates had the inclination and opportunity to direct their talents and energy in a way that actually created wealth rather than merely siphoning it from the rest of the world.
