Though pirates off the Somali coast have been active for quite some time, the door to the days of swashbuckling adventure was opened up to Americans in April when Captain Richard Phillips was rescued from a gang of salty sea dogs, revealing the wonderment of days past to a public still buzzing from a series of them-park ride inspired films starring Johnny Depp.
Since the beginning of our new adventure at sea, the US Navy has played the part of the ‘good guys,’ intervening to liberate the innocent and humbly declining the opportunity to accumulate the spoils of battle; in this case meager amounts of rice, machine guns, and 4th hand Salvation Army T shirts rather than the traditional chests of gold coins. Well, today the ‘bad guys’ jumped on the offensive more directly than ever before when they fired on a US Navy helicopter.
Really, pirates? Firing at a helicopter on a surveillance flight? Short term memory a little clogged up with the hijackings of the past three months, perhaps. I mean, that’s the only possible reason that you might have forgotten that severe bitch slap this very branch of the armed forces served up at the beginning of the summer. Ransom, you say? A-hahahaha….hahahaha…ha.
