One of the routes of dealing with the piracy issue has been sending in the United States Navy with a much stronger force. Combined with a stronger naval presence by France, Germany, and numerous other European Union countries, the hope is to get a strong enough power there to defeat the pirates. There are even countries that have been suggesting that sending ground forces into Somalia would be the perfect way to deal with the problem.
There are concerns over this, though, because of three reasons. The first is the loss of lives. While I understand that a soldier signs up to the military with the understanding that they may die because that is their job, there is no reason to throw them into conflict so haphazardly. More importantly, if the mission is led by the United States, naturally, more US soldiers are going to die than other countries and I'm tired of seeing that happen. So, if this happens, it needs to be a global operation.
Secondly, there is the obvious concern about the finances. The United States spends billions of dollars a year on their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What this does is deplete the government's money as well as prevent us from spending it on other programs. If the United States were to get involved in a third conflict like this, we'd have to funnel billions more into it which would just push our debt up even higher.
Finally, our military is currently too stretched thin. We can't afford to deploy more soldiers to other parts of the world because our military is currently having a hard enough time trying to allocate the resources for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Imagine throwing a third war into it. Even more lives would be lost because there wouldn't be the necessary equipment for them to fight the war.
Military intervention might be the best route; however, there needs to be some serious planning before the United States says that they're willing to go into war with the pirates. It needs to be a global operation and not a US led one. I don't want Americans to be all the soldiers lost while other countries just offer support. Those days need to end.
