GroundTruth

Teddy Roosevelt would have known what to do with these pirates.

In his day he went after them with everything he had.

In 1907, there was a famous naval standoff in which Barbary pirates held an American for ransom. It was a drama that riveted the nation and the world just like the one now playing out off the coast of Somalia.

The brigand was the legendary Ahmed er Raisuli, a Moroccan known as the last of the great Barbary pirates. The American held captive was Ion Perdicaris, who was being held for $70,000 ransom.

Roosevelt announced, “Pedicardis alive or Raisuli dead!”

And the slogan became part of the legend of the high seas and the American might that would protect its global shipping and commerce.

Roosevelt sent seven U.S. battleships across the Atlantic to the Moroccan coast, but in the end the hostage drama was resolved when the Moroccan government paid the ransom and Perdicaris was freed.

The story even became a Hollywood movie titled, “The Wind and the Lion.” But, OK, so in the 1975 Hollywood version the American businessman with the hard to pronounce last name was turned into a beautiful woman played by Candice Bergen and the pirate was Sean Connery.

Today’s real, live drama on the high seas with Captain Richard Phillips being held captive by Somali pirates also has all the makings of a Hollywood film, but perhaps with a more complex plot.

We haven’t yet heard Obama declare: “Phillips alive, or pirates dead!”

But we are certain screenplay writers are already circling like sharks around this story.

This time around the narrative seems to be not about the might of the U.S. Navy and the brash confidence of Teddy Roosevelt, but about the strange futility of American power in the modern world.

There are hulking Navy ships aligned against a small, out-of-gas lifeboat where pirates are holding captive an American who , if the story line is accurate, heroically endangered his own life to protect his crew and ship. And the Navy, it seems, can do nothing but wait.

It’s becoming more akin to “Dog Day Afternoon” than “The Wind and The Lion.”

It’s not over yet. The script is being written every hour on CNN, which has truly done an excellent job covering the story.

We’re pretty proud of our smaller team of reporters at GlobalPost who have also done an admirable job.

Our correspondent in Kenya, Tristan McConnell, has been on the story from day one. GlobalPost columnist HDS Greenway provided an authoritative history of America’s long battle with pirates. Tom Fenton in London commented on the failures of U.S. policy in Somalia that stand as the backdrop to the drama. And now our Boston reporter Stephanie Garlow has contributed an excellent profile of Phillips, who hails from Massachusetts and studied at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy here.

We call this kind of dogged, on-the-scene reporting GroundTruth, but the phrase seems off given that it is all unfolding in the high seas. So we’ll have to call it just plain, old truth.