GroundTruth

We needed this one.

As a country that has too often found itself confronting the futility of its force in the post 9-11 world, the patient, well-executed US Navy mission that freed Captain Richard Phillips came as a welcome ending to the five-day standoff.

Navy Seals shot three of the pirates saying that Phillips was in “imminent danger.” A fourth pirate was detained. It turns out that President Obama had given clear orders to use lethal force if necessary to protect Phillips. And in doing that Obama has successfully navigated his first significant international crisis. It was a small confrontation in relative terms given that Iraq and Afghanistan loom so large. But small failures can have big consequences as Presidents Carter and Clinton learned all too well in their first terms.

Obama said he is “resolved to to halt the rise of piracy.” And yesterday he backed up that resolve with action and saved the life of a man whose crew see him as a hero for sacrificing his own life to save theirs. We don’t have a chance to write about too many heroes these days. But the story of the drama in the Gulf of Aden gave us a chance to do just that.