Letter to President Obama #6 | Subject: Pirates

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing you with yet another pressing policy concern. I, like many Americans, was enthralled by the whole piracy saga involving Captain Robert Phillips and the Maersk Alabama last week. I’d like to offer my sincere thanks and congratulations to the Navy Seals and sailors who were involved in his rescue. I’m genuinely glad Capt. Phillips is safe.

In addition, given my experience with the strategy of naval warfare, I think I might have some helpful suggestions to help prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

First, I’d like to ask the obvious question—why haven’t we sunk their battleship? I mean, I looked in the news for a headline like “Torpedo strike sends pirates’ main vessel to the Davy Jones’s Locker” or something of that sort, but I didn’t find anything at all.

I think this is somewhere I could help. Not to brag, but I’m basically the best Battleship player I know.

And given that I’m assuming that promotions in U.S. Navy are still determined on the basis of success in Battleship, I think it might be helpful if the Navy (or the Naval Academy) were to host a Battleship contest, in order to drum up some new strategies and ways to deal with the pirates. The winner could be declared Admiral and they would be put in charge of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which, as I understand it, is responsible for dealing with the pirates. (A related question: If I were to win, could you make me an admiral and give me a three-corner hat? If so, great. it’d probably be better if I were want to direct my forces from shore; I get sea sick.)

New naval strategies are one way we can fight the pirates, but like Ron Paul recently suggested, I think we need to go further. I was particularly intrigued by Paul’s recent suggestion that we arm our merchant vessels and send privateers after the pirates. To really discourage piracy, we should go even further-—using examples from 17th century piracy in the Caribbean—-we can assemble a counter-piracy dream team. This vessel and its crew would serve two purposes—first, it would strike fear into the hearts of the pirates and second, it would serve as a great recruiting tool for the Navy.

The first thing we need is a vessel, and I have the perfect ship in mind—to me, no other ship is scarier than the Exxon Valdez.

But of course we’d need a captain, and he’d need to be as scary as possible. Do we happen to have any admirals who are, say, over six and a half feet tall, with a ZZ-top-length beard and thick, long black hair? And if so, do we still have any cannon fuse lying around? (Do we still use that stuff?) If so, we could ask said admiral to wind that cannon fuse into his hair and beard, lighting it on fire before the inevitable boarding of the opposing vessel and voila—instant Blackbeard.

In order to make the crew truly terrifying, I have some other suggestions about crew members too—I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that Rob Zombie looks a little like a pirate, and if you’ve seen his movies, you know he’s really, really creepy. In addition, if you could contact Governor Schwarzenegger, I could probably get in touch with the Jesse the Body Ventura, as a friend of a friend knows him. (He was my governor, after all.) That makes three really tough, creepy guys, and given proper plundering and pillaging training, all three would make good pirates. I’d like to make an unorthodox selection for ship’s band, instead of including the standard string ensemble or anything like that, I think we need something a little more terrifying. I think the band Rammstein would a great fit for this project. One reviewer said they wrote “music to invade Poland to”—how’s that for creepy? Even better, they’re German and they reportedly love to set things on fire! Perfect!

Of course, the crew would need the proper uniforms and modern armament—but I’m also convinced that we’d need swords. I remember that the Marines have swords in their commercials; does the Navy have swords? If not, could we borrow a few from the Marines?

Finally, I know recruitment might be an issue for the Navy at this point—and I think our anti-piracy dream team would be a recruitment boon and it could help clear up some negative stereotypes about the Navy. For instance, in high school I thought about going into the Navy to fight pirates, but my guidance counselor steered me away from the idea. In so doing, he mentioned two spooky words—scurvy and eye patches.

I’m not going to lie—scurvy’s a little scary. But I think there’s an easy way around this problem, after reading a little bit about scurvy, I know it’s not an issue for Navy crews these days—so why not run a Navy ad featuring a well-known celebrity, Johnny Depp, say, about Exxon Valdez on the hunt for pirates. And while we’re at it, why not show him with all sorts of Vitamin C sources all around him, and maybe show Johnny drinking a big glass of orange juice or something. This could help clear up that misconception.

As far as eye patches go, now don’t get me wrong—I’m a pretty big fan of them. (I even wore one as a joke to my senior prom—it was on a riverboat.) But I certainly don’t want to wear one all the time, and until I did some research recently, I thought that it was required equipment in the piracy business. To avoid this stigma, perhaps our anti-piracy Navy ad could highlight the Navy’s excellent vision care plan and show lots of smiling (grimacing?) pirate faces in glasses, contacts, those light-to-dark prescription sunglasses and pirates waiting in line at the optometrist, that sort of thing.

If we were to adopt these suggestions, I think our fight against the pirates would go that much better.

Sincerely,


Brett Ortler