It was great news to hear that captain Richard Phillips was rescued yesterday. I'm amazed that snipers could hit someone on a boat, from another boat, at a distance of nearly 100 feet.

As a result of this hostage situation, there has been a lot of news about pirate attacks around Somalia. It's clearly a big business for these people, seeing as their country is essentially a nonexistent entity. The problem is that these pirates have yet to be punished for their actions. 100% of their ransom attempts (up until now) have been carried through. In other words, they always win.

The other day, it occurred to me how we can solve this problem. All we need is a throwback to the days of World War 2. It's fairly apparent that these pirates have little naval power. They aren't heavily armed, they attack in small boats, and they haven't (yet) appeared in large numbers. As a direct result, this is a perfect opportunity to employ the use of the convoy system.

All we need to do is establish a perimeter around the problem area. If you want to go inside this perimeter, even if you're just passing through, you have to be a part of a convoy. Multiple convoys would leave daily, protected by the various naval ships that are already patrolling the area. This would make attacks much harder, much less infrequent, and would (I claim) put a large stop on the activity going on.