Don't go whack over the Iraq attack, Jack!

Vacuum Energy friend e-man writes:

I don't have a particular interest in Senator Clinton, so maybe that's why I would've skipped this news...What I find of particular interest is the idea president Bush has in mind to contain the growth of US deficit.. nothing really big, better, is more than enormous.. just $8 trillion. As everybody can see, exporting democracy with tanks in the war against ghosts and is not being very successful.

Suppose that you are an eighteenth century Prime Minster of Great Britain. One day when you're out of the city, news arrives that a pirate fleet has somehow managed to sail up the Thames, cause thousands of casulties by crashing a fireship loaded with gunpowder into Tower Bridge, cannonade the Parliament building trying to kill you, and cannonade Buckingham Palace trying to kill the King. What do you do? Certainly, you would order every ship in the Royal Navy to hunt down the pirates, try them, hang them, and then organize a punitive expedition to destroy the pirate bases.

So far so good. But lets say that you then find out that all of the captured pirates speak only French, that some of the pirates managed to escape and find refuge in France, and that the infamous First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, is both praising the heroism of the pirate attack and building his own pirate fleet armed with the most powerful cannon available. Then what do you do?