Civilized and uncivilized responses to pirates

For some years now piracy has been endemic off the Horn of Africa and one of the strange cultural phenomena of our day, which probably deserves some anthropological study, is the ambivalent Western response to piracy, which ranges from the romanticism of International Talk-like-a-pirate Day to the crude vengefulness described by The Western Confucian: The Republic of Korea's Civilized Response to Somali Piracy:

Pirates though they may be (or have been), they are worthy of the dignified treatment these stories report is being afforded to the dead — S. Korea to Hand Bodies of Pirates Over to Somalia — and to the living — Pirates may be flown to Korea for punishment. 'Piracy is an issue where universal jurisdiction is applied,' said a government official, quoted in the second article. 'There will be no legal barriers to punish them because it is an international crime against the Korean people.'

Compare that manly, civilized response to the barbarism of the cheering when suspected pirates 'were 'set free' in a tiny inflatable raft, with no navigation equipment, 350 miles off the coast of Yemen' (to agonizingly die of thirst) by one of the blogosphere's more annoying personalities — Rod Dreher Supports Extra-Judicial Execution. 'Off you go, lads! Enjoy the sailing!' he lisped.

And one could say that the Somali pirates are simply exercising their right to a non-statist freemarket dream.