EDITORIAL: THE USA TODAY, USA

Our view: Shippers make easy prey for Somali pirates

In the five weeks since Somali pirates killed four American yachters off the coast of Africa, pirates have attacked more than 30 other vessels. Among their targets was the Maersk Alabama, a U.S.-flagged container ship that was captured by pirates in 2009, then rescued by Navy SEALs. This time, on March 9, the ship got away. Members of a Danish yachting family were less lucky. Taken hostage Feb. 24, they were given a sickening offer: Turn over their 13-year-old daughter to the pirate captain, and he'd free the adults and boys.

OPPOSING VIEW: 'Provide more naval assets'

At last count, at least 30 foreign vessels and more than 700 people, including that family, were being held hostage by Somali pirates, according to the British maritime security firm GAOPS. (One ship is U.S.-operated but has no U.S. crew.) Their fate illustrates that while the heavily armed pirates succeed in boarding less than 1% of the roughly 20,000 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels that pass near the Somali coast each year, once boarded, a vessel is practically doomed. It can be saved only if it is reached in time by the navies patrolling the area, and then at great risk. Or if the vessel owner has insurance to pay ransom demands now exceeding $5 million per ship.

Lured by these huge sums, pirates are becoming better armed and more brazen, putting more crews and cargoes at risk. The cost to the American taxpayer of helping police the area, and having the U.S. Navy ready to stage hostage-rescue operations, is already high. Add to that the possibility that regional terrorist group al-Shabab seeks to target U.S. vessels, and the risk and costs of piracy rise higher still. With each success, the pirates and their financiers grow stronger. 

Against this backdrop, you'd think that vessel owners would take measures that have proved to keep pirates from boarding — using barbed wire fencing and anti-climb paint; staying a great distance from the Somali shore and steaming at top speed; providing crew with an assault-proof room with ship controls, called a citadel; and complete avoidance of the area by recreational yachts. Yet shockingly, not all vessel owners follow these "best practices." Many appear to calculate that while damage is great if a vessel is boarded, the odds of being boarded are low and the investment in countermeasures is not worthwhile. Consider that from September through November, 29% of vessels in the region, including a U.S.-flagged one, appeared to lack anti-piracy measures, according to a task force of navies patrolling there. (Some of the vessels might have had armed guards, another effective countermeasure.)
To be sure, a better solution would be a Somali government that arrested its pirates. But Somalia has lacked a functioning government for 20 years.
An aggressive military response is also tempting, and appropriate when pirates are found at sea, but attacking them on shore, in the villages where they live, is problematic. Civilian casualties would be high and success uncertain. International support is also lacking. Other countries are even loath to deal with captured Somali pirates in their own courts and prisons, though some are making an effort. In February, the U.S. sentenced one of the pirates apprehended after the first attack on the Maersk Alabama to 33 years. And, of course, the U.S. Navy and others have ratcheted up anti-piracy efforts.
But just as one locks up one's home against thieves, the owners of vessels transiting the obviously dangerous region need to take all possible precautions. When they don't, then the cost to navies and taxpayers of protecting them ought to be passed on in the form of penalties and fines.

In Middle East, familiar echoes about limits of U.S. power

Just 30 days ago the Senate, outraged by Moammar Gadhafi's brutality, passed a resolution urging swift imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya. Republicans and Democrats in the House agreed. Now many sound shocked that the operation isn't an unmitigated triumph. At a House hearing Thursday, lawmakers peppered Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen with skepticism.

As Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., deftly observed, "You can get sort of whiplash around here trying to keep up with the positions of some people."
Nothing happening should be a surprise. Gates warned early on about a no-fly zone's limitations, and he and Mullen only added more evidence Thursday.

The rebels are outnumbered 10-1, they said, and barely 1,000 rebel fighters have military training. NATO airstrikes, despite degrading the Libyan military by 25%, are not coordinated with the disorganized rebel offensives. There's no predicting how long toppling Gadhafi might take, nor is that outcome guaranteed.
So now, according to various reports, the CIA has put operatives into Libya, and NATO is considering arming the rebels despite the disquieting history of Afghanistan, where the U.S. armed fighters against a Soviet invasion only to see them turn into today's enemy, the Taliban.
This all lends an uncomfortably familiar feeling of half-baked commitment, incremental escalation and dubious outcomes.
It's too late now to undo the no-fly decision or to switch to an all-out assault, which would fracture the alliance and leave the U.S. caught in a third land war in a Muslim country. So success will depend on patiently ratcheting up pressure on Gadhafi's loyalists to abandon him, as his foreign minister did Wednesday.
More important, events in Libya and those that led up to them should serve as a cautionary tale about the limits of U.S. power as revolution roils the Arab world.
So far, the pattern has been stumble and recover.
After the first uprising, in Tunisia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement of support for the repressive, U.S.-allied regime, which promptly collapsed. When demonstrations spread to Egypt, Clinton repeated the misjudgment. Again the regime fell.
When protests erupted in Libya, the twice-fooled administration rushed to get ahead of history. President Obama proclaimed that Gadhafi must go, only to see the Libyan strongman rewrite the script by crushing his opponents. Now the U.S. is in the awkward position of having committed its military to protect civilians but not to attaining Obama's prematurely stated goal.
Aside from that mismatch between aims and means, the mistakes look obvious only in retrospect. No one could have predicted that the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit vendor would unleash forces that would depose tyrants who had ruled for decades. Nor can anyone predict what will happen next. Regimes in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen are already in jeopardy. In none of those nations is military action likely to help.
Better to play a long game — one that heeds the lessons of America's most successful long game, the Cold War. The greatest mistakes of that period were its two failed hot wars, in Korea and Vietnam. Success came not from the exercise of military power but from the resolute commitment to use it in defense of allies threatened by Soviet aggression. Repressed populations yearned for the freedom that the U.S. enticingly offered, even as it collaborated with undemocratic but useful friends. Saudi Arabia, controller of world oil prices and bulwark against Iran, is a current case in point.
In that regard, Obama is right to keep the U.S. profile low, right not to treat all countries the same, and right to preach democracy at every turn.
The fact that American flags aren't burning on Arab streets, despite years of hostility, speaks volumes about the opportunity. But it will be lost if the U.S. overplays its hand, as it might have done in Libya.

College hoops' lesson for football

Virginia Commonwealth University and Butler University are this year's surprise teams in the festival of sport known as March Madness. They come from unheralded conferences and have knocked off major basketball powers to reach the Final Four of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
The college basketball world, indeed the whole sports nation, delights when teams like this get to play in the title game (and one of them will, because they face each other in Saturday's semifinals). They are called things such as Cinderella and underdog.
College football is another matter. Instead of a fair and honest tournament, it has a bowl system with the primary purpose of keeping television revenue concentrated in a handful of major conferences.
Outsider football teams are not called Cinderellas; they are called derogatory things — most notably, in the words of Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee, "the Little Sisters of the Poor." That phrase was part of Gee's explanation for why overachieving upstarts such as Boise State and Texas Christian University should not be allowed to play in college football's championship game. Their impressive records were made possible, he said, by playing in weak divisions against charity-case opponents.
Well, TCU did a pretty good job of shaming the establishment last year. After the polls and computer rankings determined that its 12-0 season was not good enough for the championship game, TCU defeated Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. Wisconsin was the winner of the powerhouse Big Ten conference, a status it achieved by defeating Gee's Ohio State.
And yet the college football bowl system remains as entrenched as the Soviet Politburo during the Cold War. Next year, a so-called championship game will be played between two teams selected by polls and computer rankings. The best of the rest will be sent to bowl games based on the poll rankings, the conferences they play in, and how large a television audience they are likely to command.
That is college football fans' loss. March Madness is one of the few sporting events that consistently live up to the hype; this year's tourney has had more than its share of buzzer-beating bracket busters. Imagine how much more exciting college football would be if it culminated in a tournament of, say, 16 teams over four weekends in December and January.