We know there are brave Sailors running around Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the most part it's an Army and Marine Corps show.
So it's nice to see the Navy getting down with its bad self.
American warships battled pirates Tuesday who had seized a tanker off the coast of Somalia as well as another vessel northeast of Mogadishu, combined reports said.
In the waters off Somalia, the warships reportedly sunk two pirate vessels and pursued a hijacked skiff carrying some of the fleeing hijackers.
That's our Navy - while everybody else is engaging in a no-fun grinding series of insurgent conflicts, they're killing pirates.
It's no Battle of Leyte Gulf, but actions like the Navy's are vitally important in what is probably the least-recognized theater of operations in the Global War on Terror.
Whether or not the warships engaged in pirate sinkin' today were technically, at that moment, acting as part of Joint Task Force Horn Of Africa (JTF-HOA), is not immediately apparent. However, that JTF is doing the hard work now that will prevent the rest of our military from having to do ugly work in the region later.
They're training troops, supporting communities and building infrastructure in a very touchy area in an effort to deny that territory to Al Qaeda. A lot of that is medical outreach and school building in those nations. And some it is law-and-order work.
Which includes whacking pirates off the coast of Somalia. So, Go Navy! Keep killing pirates - in addition to being a vital part of the war effort, it's really damn cool.
|