With all the talk of the example of the Tripolitan War in regard to the Somalia piracy problem, I should link to my 1998 Army article on the lessons of the Tripolitan War for war in the littorals.
We think of that victory as a clean win, but it was messy and imperfect. But it was still victory.
In the case of Somalia, the task of a punitive mission is well within the capabilities of the Navy/Marine Corps team (My article was written in the context of arguments in the day that we wouldn't need to fight land wars. That didn't work out as expected, eh?). But don't expect such a mission to solve the problem for good.
Our support for the Ethiopians two years ago didn't solve the problem of Somalia, but it pushed it down for a while.
Addressing Somalia again by hitting the pirates (and jihadis again) would be a good idea without worrying about permanently solving the problem.
NOTE: I updated the article link from the now-dead Geocities link to a new source.
