OT:

Regarding my pracy hobby horse, Sec State Clinton made a statement on the matter today which can be read here (btw - The Obama admin has decided to rename “press releases” as “blog entries”. Change!)

To her credit she makes this statement :

But let me underscore this point: The United States does not make concessions or ransom payments to pirates.

But her next statement is engineered to mollify those who criticized Bush et al for being too “macho”

What we will do is first send an envoy to attend the international Somali peacekeeping and development meeting scheduled in Brussels.

But what really drew my attention was what was not mentioned - Al Shebaab. She goes to great pains to talk around them and the Islamists who control much of the coastline and who are deeply intertwined with the piracy and use funds from piracy to fund terror operations and imposition of Sharia. remember - these are the guys of “the Islamic Courts” movement that took over Somalia briefly and started running people through courts and chopping their heads off after 5 minute trials.

Read her statement - she speaks of the “Somali Government” as if Somalia were either governed or governable. It is a bit farcical to not acknowledge the chaos that is Somalia and that a major player there is the local Al Qaeda franchise.

But it makes sense - the Obama Admin will not acknowledge a nexus between Al Qaeda and any of its franchisees anywhere. They have yet to. I am not going to condemn that strategy yet because it could have some benefits and I haven’t thought them out yet. But it is clear that this administration will only say it is fighting terror in the broadest of senses, yet won’t brand any particular group (except Al Qaeda itself) as terrorists that they are in fact fighting. So Shabaab will simply be ignored and not acknowledged as a group vis a vis piracy even though it is at the center of it. Were she to say “Al Shabaab” she would be mentioning the name of a group on the State Depts terror list - a name that Bush put there and Obama won’t take off without drawing criticism. So it simply won’t be mentioned anymore.