[Skybird]

That other pirates may come when some pirates get killed, is not really an argument to support a view that one should not care to fight and kill them. It is neither a pointless nor an immoral fight as long as you do not limit yourself by some inner handicap that says: killing 17 pirates is okay, but from the 18th on you have a moral problem. You judge your fight either to be right or wrong, and in case of the first it is okay with your conscience. If the fight's purpose is okay with your conscience, then it does not matter how many enemies you kill. If your conscience says the fight's purpose is not okay, then even killing just one will push you into moral crisis. The number of enemies killed simply is not the argument for or against the case here.

You could as well say you refuse to shoot at some street robber attacking you, or a rapist,m because more may come after them, attacking either you or somebody else.

In the end it costs just pennies and some seconds to machine-produce a bullet or a cartridge. Producing a baby pirate and growing it to a physically strong adult pirate, costs more of both. Now do the math.

Loosing freight and ship and paying millions in ransom that get turned into more sophisticated wepaons and boats for the pirates, is worse enough. But to think about the hostages mon th and years of martyrdom, their fear and the psychic as well as physical torturere they get forced to endure, is enough an argument for me to justify any means necessary to fight pirates to their total and complete defeat and annihilation. To me it is a moral principle that your own misery does not justify that you solve it at the cost of hadning the misery over to somebody else. That you got stolen money, does not give you the moral right to steal the compensation from somebody else. That you got mistreated and fate dealt badly with your, does not give you the moral right to do the same to you. That you are starving does not give you a moral right to torture somebody else or to kill him. That may be provoking a thought to some people here, especially social romantics, but I stick to it. Survival instincts may make people to act like in ther latter example, yes. But instincts and morals are two very different things anyway. Nature knows no morals. A predator is a predator, it acts by it's design and by instinct. A slaughterer or murderer is a slaughterer or murderer, he acts beside moral rules. A pirate is a pirate. If they aim at me with their actions and attacks, at my property or at those I love and protect, I reserve the right to fight them off, with lethal force if that is adequate. And that is no moral burden to my conscience at all. A moral burden it will be if I kill accidentally, or kill the wrong one.