Both sides were to blame in plane crash
Americans acting too righteous with their stance on the U.S-China situation

By Chris Dobson
Skiff Staff

Imagine, if you will, a contact lens, sitting in solution on a desk between you and a friend. You are explaining, quite rationally, that it is in fact a convex lens, but meanwhile your friend rants and raves that it must be concave. Four more of your friends stop by the table and standing behind you, agree that in fact it is a convex lens. Now an objective observer might conclude that both views are correct from the point of view of that of the six people around the table.

America and China are facing a similar crisis right now.

An American spy plane flying in international air space is met by two Chinese F-8 fighter jets and, after a midair collision, is forced to land in Chinese territory. The United States demands an immediate return of its service people and that China respect American sovereignty and not inspect the plane.

China, after losing one of its pilots in the mid-air collision with an American spy plane, demands an apology for the loss of life and reparations.

I don’t believe either of these governments are necessarily innocent in this situation. Surely the American government could foresee that sending spy planes near a foreign country might provoke a reaction from them. Surely China knows that sending fighter jets to shadow an American spy plane might raise the ante, so to speak.

But what I find most disturbing is that both countries immediately took a hard line position, demanding this or that from the other. Isn’t there a concept of personal responsibility here in America? I hate to turn it around on them, but they must accept the responsibility of sending a military plane along the coast of another country. After all, it’s not like when we shot down the commercial Iranian jetliner in the Mediterranean Sea during the 1980s.

After seeing his wing man eject, the Chinese pilot radioed for permission to shoot down the American plane and was refused. Very easily the 24 service people could be dead right now.

Imagine the reaction of George W. Bush if the North Koreans started surveillance on Southern California and an American fighter plane crashed off the coast of Long Beach or if the Cubans started patrolling the coast of Florida intercepting all telecommunications. Perhaps I should say to imagine the reaction of Dick Cheney and the way Dubya would stumble through his prepared statement. I can almost see the smirk now.

Let’s then look at what our reaction might be like if we had a rational response to this incident. TV is interrupted by Bush to address the nation:

“Today in the South China Sea, a mid-air collision has caused the downing of a Chinese air force jet and the emergency landing of an American Naval surveillance plane on the Chinese island of Hainan. I express my utmost concern for the life of the Chinese pilot and offer the resources of the American military to aid in the search for the missing pilot and express my deepest regrets to his family and friends.

In response to this occurrence, we will immediately suspend all airborne surveillance of our Chinese neighbors. We ask that we be granted access to our service people so that we may debrief them and find ways to avoid any incident of this type again in the future.”

That took me under two minutes to write, and it would do more to soothe relations and express compassion than the United States has done in the last two weeks or so. So more and more compassionate conservatism rears its disfigured head. I wonder if compassionate conservatism only works for people who look like Bush, or if he just forgot he used to talk about that stuff.

And before I hear a defense of America and our right to spy on other countries, let me just ask if you’re willing to fight for the right of the Chinese to spy on us because taking any other position would be hypocritical and ethnocentric.
Claiming a right for yourself and then preventing others from that right is arrogant, conceited, and ultimately destructive to any form of justice.

We laugh at others, saying they behave backwards or ridiculous and then conveniently forget that here in America, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated by children searching for Chocolate Rabbit Eggs. Why not Aluminum Donkeys Shoes if we’re just going to start making things up? Or Pickled Dog thumbs? Or spicy buffalo wings? Just because the media tells us we all agree and stand united doesn’t ever mean that we are right, it just means that the media doesn’t want to give airtime to any other position.

No one is right in this confrontation with China unless everybody is right because ‘right’ is a matter of personal choice and your point of view. A better method of thinking about this would be, what can the United States and China do to prevent this from occurring again?

Perhaps if we could step outside of this “Great American Life” and visit the destruction we have reaped upon the people of Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, maybe our view about our role in the world would change. On the other hand that might really hurt our weapons industry, not wanting to kill people I mean, and then who knows what might happen to the Stock Market. So I guess maybe American prosperity and righteous living aren’t synonyms after all.

Chris Dobson is a senior history and political science major from Arlington.
He can be reached at (c.p.dobson@student.tcu.edu).

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