On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:34:45 -0700, "asadi"
wrote:




Moreover, if their demands were for food and medicine, or the
wanted international media coverage to shine a light on the alleged
problem,
that too would tend to lend credence to the whole "po' folks trying to
survive"
thing.


TC,
R
...

Damned good point.....I've often thought that some of those we call
terrorists are not properly using the public relations media....

john

A big reason is that because _most_ of those "we" (since I'm not sure who "we"
is, I'll take it from the context that you mean, generally, "westerners" with an
emphasis on those in the US) call terrorists are not really "terrorists," but
criminals, and it's pretty hard to do any effective PR for criminals (...it's
not particularly easy to do so for "terrorists," either...). When someone
tries, they wind up looking like, at best, a naive goofball - see Ken's article,
or at worst, a nutcase - see responses here putting a couple of mercs with
heavy machine guns and/or varmint rifles on merchant ships or listen to Rush or
other assorted loons.

IAC, while it can be argued that it is the job of the US military to protect
US-flagged vessels at sea, if such a mission is undertaken, it needs to be with
all necessary resources and some hard decisions about roles and goals. People
will get killed and the possibility for "collateral damage" is present and it
appears fairly high. Either accept the risks and get on with it or don't, but
pick an option and stick with it.

TC,
R