EDITORIAL: ACORN at sea

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The modern world is so full of muddled thinking that liberals aren't sure if killing pirates is the right thing to do.

Capt. Richard Phillips' rescue from Somali pirates, which we have praised as an effective use of minimal force, is starting to be spun as something less than heroic. The liberal blogosphere is welling up with anguish that the terminated pirates were just mixed-up kids.

One worry is that the pirates were teenagers between 17 and 19 years of age. Michael Crowley of the New Republic cries that this "makes it all feel rather less glamorous," even if necessary. Speaking at the Marine Corps War College, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates clarified the point when he called them "untrained teenagers with heavy weapons," meaning Capt. Phillips was in more danger if they had been older and more experienced. For hostages, getting shot accidentally is often more of a possibility than being killed on purpose. Meanwhile, the debate already has opened about whether the surviving pirate, said to be between the ages of 16 and 20, should be "tried as an adult."

Another bleeding-heart fret is that toward the end of the crisis, the pirates were hungry, frightened, out of fuel and ammunition, and desperate to trade Capt. Phillips in exchange for their lives. This was reported in McClatchy Newspapers, quoting a relative of the hostage-takers. A sympathetic poster at Democratic Underground wrote, "Notice that these so-called 'pirates' didn't kill the American captain when he tried to escape, like, three times." This was hardly an act of mercy. If they had killed Capt. Phillips, they would have lost their only bargaining chip. Never mind logic - Frank Arango at the Portland Independent Media Center charged that President Obama "ordered cold-blooded murder off the Somali coast."

The most ridiculous of the second guesses is that these were not pirates at all, but socially responsible defenders of the Somali people. The Rev. Al Sharpton invited his radio listeners to call and talk about "the so-called pirates. They call themselves voluntary Coast Guards in Somalia, which may be more apt." Rapper K'naan, who says some of his cousins are pirates, told Angela Yee on "The Morning After" radio show that the buccaneers started out as a defense force stopping large corporations from dumping "nuclear toxic-waste containers" in Somali waters and that the ransoms were merely reparations for corporate misconduct. In other words, the pirates are community activists, like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) at sea.