Here’s why I won’t ever run for president: so I don’t have to make decisions like whether to negotiate with Somali pirates, or to send in crack sniper teams to blow their heads off.

It was reported recently that the Ukrainian government paid 3.2 million dollars to secure the release of 20 sailors and their cargo ship. Interviewed afterwards, one of the pirates said “No huge amount has peen paid, just something to cover our expenses.” His expenses?! My God, it turns out the man was just running a simple non-profit! He had initially asked for 20 million dollars – if my math holds up, that’s a million bucks a head – but the government negotiated each life down to $160,000. Now that’s playing hardball.

But it sure doesn’t make for a killer high seas thriller, not like the way Obama handled it. We all know that story – four snipers on rocky seas, in the dark, one chance to do it right. One bullet strays by an inch, someone’s finger slips, a pirate ducks to scratch a knee at the wrong moment, and that captain might have gone home in a box.

So do you “not negotiate with terrorists?” Is that a slippery slope that just encourages more piracy? Do you show them that theirs is a game that can’t be won?

Or do you cough up money for “expenses,” and tell yourself, ah hell, we spend that much each day bailing out Wall Street, or running gasoline up and down the streets of Iraq? When human lives are at stake, do you play it as conservative, or as cowboy, as possible? I know I was pumping my fist in the air (if only in my mind) when I heard that we were f?*%ng badass and took out those pirates.

But what would I have done if we failed? Would I have tsk tsk-ed, shaken my head, and said, in my best smug Bay Area liberal voice, “See, violence only breeds more violence.”

Hell, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be writing this note.