Stop pirates by not being there

How can we stop the piracy that has become a danger to our merchant seamen? Let us remove the temptation by severely curtailing or even halting our ships from carrying those types of cargo along the busy shipping lane off Eastern Africa. There may be benefits as well as short term problems in doing that.

If, instead of sending food to people who put forth no effort to raise it or hunt their own, perhaps with a little education, they will do those things independently. We could then use that food and the money required to buy it to help our fellow Americans who are having a hard time because of job loss instead of sending it to Africa.

If we buy less crude oil from the Middle Eastern countries just to the north of that shipping lane, other benefits will eventually result. We may have to rely on our own resources and supplies of crude oil for fuel to power our current cars. We might need to ration. We could even prohibit the marketing of any new vehicle that does not get at least 25 mpg. We can encourage our auto manufacturers to further develop for market the electric vehicles they seem to have almost ready.

My solution to piracy then is to remove the pirates' temptation by sending very few if any of our cargo ships along the Somalia coast. Africa is capable of learning to provide for itself and we are capable of curtailing our use of crude oil as we shift to the more efficient and safer for world climate use of electricity to propel our vehicles.

Donald B. Abbs

Elgin