Pirates and terrorism

Procrastination kept me from writing on this before. I read this post over at Professor Bainbridge's blog and it lit a fire under me.

Here is the thesis: apply the law of piracy to terrorists. I read it first here in 2005 and I still like the idea. If nothing else, apply the law of piracy to terrorists eliminates the intellectual fraud (well, this particular fraud) of a War on Terrorism. I guess the idea goes back to 2001 and Ron Paul - he has a press release on a bill allowing for letters of marque against bin Laden. Here is an editorial from 2001 supporting the idea.

I have not had time to track down Ron Paul's bill but I am pretty sure that it never got passed.

Which then leads to some questions - one generous to Bush and one not:

1. Could it be that Bush did not like this idea because it offered no profits to companies like Halliburton?
2. Could it be that applying the law of piracy to terrorists would be of no use in our War on Terrorism?

Googling "piracy terrorism marque" lead me to the legislation proposed by Paul and the editorial and this law review article by Robert P. Dewitte: Let Privateers Marque Terrorism: A Proposal for a Reawakening. I have not read this yet (28 pages in PDF format).
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