An op-ed contributor in today's NY Times argues that piracy is terrorism.
No, me hearties, piracy is not terrorism. Pirates are not trying to destroy societal fabric or change the behavior of nations they despise. Pirates are doing it for the money, a shitload of money. Bunches of pirates are going out there in speedboats to jack ships in order to ransom them for millions of dollars apiece. They're not even traditional pirates; they're not slaughtering the crews and selling the ships and cargoes to Chinese middlemen, which is what the Malaysian pirates were doing.
The Somali pirates need the status quo to continue. They need the world's economy to function so that they can have a stream of easy targets sail past. The problem for the Somali pirates is that there are too many of them, now, and they are attracting the attention of the rest of the world. When they were jacking half-a-dozen ships or so a year, nobody paid much attention to them. There are too many, they are getting too greedy and it is becoming in the world's interest to make the effort to stomp on them.
Piracy is not terrorism. Using the "terrorism" label is both cheap and sloppy reasoning.
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