We now know the price to be paid for President Obama’s inaction with the Somali pirates. We know because they’ve hijacked another boat, this time capturing another 16 hostages:

Pirates captured a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew including 10 Italians on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden.

“We can confirm that 10 Italians were kidnapped but we have no further details,” an Italian foreign ministry official said.

Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates. He said the tugboat was towing two barges at the time of capture but there were no details on their cargo. “This incident shows the pirates are becoming more daring and violent,” Mwangura told Reuters by phone.

Why shouldn’t they be daring? It’s not like President Carter Obama will do anything to strike fear in their hearts.

Had this happened under either President Bush, the response would’ve been predictable, swift and violent. They would’ve made examples of the pirates plying the waters, then they would’ve literally struck them where they live.

Doing nothing and hoping the problem disappears isn’t a policy. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. This is what happens when people elect someone who hasn’t had time to think military strategies through. This is what happens when the commander-in-chief is reluctant to trust his officers.

That’s why experienced foreign policy and national security experts think the Obama administration will be as ineffective and timid as the Carter administration. Based on what’s happened thus far, there’s no reason for them to change their minds.

Ed’s analysis is right on the money:

This emphasizes the need to react swiftly, using the full might of our power, when piracy arises. In a real sense, this is asymmetrical warfare, only with a profit motive rather than theological extremism pushing it. If we scale down our response to the same level as theirs, or incrementally rather than overwhelmingly higher, then we play on their ground and not ours. If we expect to have a realistic deterrent in our navy, then we have to allow them to unleash their full fury on the pirates, all of the pirates, when they dare to attack American shipping, and Western shipping in general.

The principle behind using overwhelming force in this situation is simple: Hitting the pirates and their home bases ups the ante. It tells them that for every cost they inflict on us, we’ll inflict five times as much on them. Let’s see how long they want to play under those terms.

The price for their piracy thus far has been minimal to nonexistent. It isn’t dissimilar to southwest companies hiring illegal immigrants because they represented cheap labor. When raids were increased on those companies, the hiring of illegal aliens died because they no longer represented cheap labor anymore.

These pirates haven’t paid a heavy price yet. How will they react if there’s an actual cost in terms of blood and treasure? Perhaps they’d be brave enough to continue. If they were brave and we had a real commander-in-chief, a real commander-in-chief would give a simple order: As long as they attempt ship hijackings, their ships and their villages will get turned into rubble.

It’s a shame we don’t have a real commander-in-chief. It’s a crying shame they didn’t get the memo that nobody messes with our VP.

Technorati: Pirates, Hijackings, Gulf Of Aden, Somalia, President Obama, Jimmy Carter, Pacifism, Democrats, President Bush, Military, George Herbert Walker Bush, Republicans

Cross-posted at California Conservative