Back in April you may remember the made-for-TV saga involving "U.S. Navy SEAL snipers killed three Somali pirates and freed the American sea captain who had offered himself as a hostage to save his crew." As MSNBC continues with the story, "The operation was a victory for the world's most powerful military but angry pirates vowed Monday to retaliate."

In a scant four months, we've gone from gun-toting, pirate-sniping bad-boys to "ooh, they're shooting at us...let's fly away". Despite the best efforts by our military back in April, it seems we've done little to shake the confidence of the gaggle of pirates which plague the coast of Somalia (there are four other merchant ships and 105 crew members that are also being held by pirates near this hijacked ship).

While I understand that we most likely were concerned about the safety of the 30+ hostages on board the currently captive fishing boat, we didn't even bother to take one shot back. Not exactly the strong hand that is needed to command fear or respect in these lawless waters, especially after we escalated the regional situation back in April - in both deed and word (by the President himself):

"I want to be very clear that we are resolved to halt the rise of piracy in that region and to achieve that goal, we're going to have to continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks,"

Guess we're not doing so well on the halting and preventing...