Editorial+Sample

Hats off to Navy, merchant captain Tribune Editorial Updated: 04/13/2009 04:56:37 PM MDT  Congratulations to the Navy for rescuing Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, and to Phillips himself for making that rescue possible. From what we can read, the skipper of the Maersk Alabama is a canny ship's master whose wise actions to protect his craft and crew should become a chapter in the anti-piracy handbook. Hats off, too, to the sharpshooters aboard the //USS Bainbridge// who reportedly killed with three shots three pirates who were holding Phillips at gunpoint aboard a lifeboat. Though we join other Americans in rejoicing at the outcome of this fight, we also recognize that it easily could have gone badly. That it did not is partly a matter of luck and partly a matter of the skill and nerve of Phillips, his crew and the Navy. Phillips apparently put his ship and crew in the best position by ordering his shipmates to secure themselves elsewhere in the container ship when pirates took control of the bridge. Phillips disabled navigation from the bridge and thereby left control of the ship to his own engineers. He then surrendered himself as a hostage, and the pirates escaped on a lifeboat with Phillips as captive. The pirates never gained control of the ship. It remains unexplained why the pirates were not able to escape on their own vessel. You may wonder why merchant crews do not arm themselves. The answer is that ship owners do not want to risk the lives of their crews and the value of their ships by engaging in an arms race with pirates. That is why, traditionally, merchant crews are unarmed. Whether the extent of piracy off the coast of Somalia and elsewhere, particularly in southeast Asia, will cause ship owners to re-evaluate that policy is a question for them to decide. In the meantime, the Navy faces the same challenges from lightly armed pirates at sea that the Army facesfrom lightly armed insurgents on land. Overwhelming firepower does not always defeat a smaller, quicker adversary in his home territory. The Navy can overwhelm most enemies in ship-to-ship combat, but it risks the lives of hostages if it does. And the Navy can't be everywhere. Still, for two centuries, U.S. policy has rightly been to meet piracy with force. After President Jefferson dispatched the infant U.S. Navy against the pirates of Tripoli in 1801, the result was not always happy. One U.S. frigate was lost and its entire crew captured. After the United States forced the Tripolitans to sue for peace, the treaty that ended the war in 1805 included a ransom for the captured U.S. crew. The brutal reality is that pirates can be deterred, but it comes at a price in blood and treasure.  ** Instructions: Read the editorial above from the Tribune...also known as a House Editorial which represents the overall opinion of the paper rather than just a single writer. How is this article different from the news article on the same topic? Be prepared to discuss this in class. **