Political games
People need not be used as pawns

The Chinese government agreed Tuesday to return the 24 U.S. crew members who have been held captive since their EP-3 spy plane was forced to make an emergency landing following its collision with a Chinese F-8 fighter jet 10 days ago.

And we all got lucky.

President Bush and his officials survived the stalemate without having to make an official apology for our military’s covert operations. The incident ended without need for further military action. No one died. No one on our side was seriously injured. No harm, no foul.

The Chinese government convinced American officials to express their condolences for their dead pilot. They got the world to sit up and take notice. They reminded the American people, without using missiles or manpower, they are still a force to be reckoned with. No harm, no foul.

The America public, despite being caught in the middle of an international affairs mess, too complicated to understand and too much like the Cold War to ignore, is preparing to welcome its newest heroes home. Ten days is a long time if a family member is being held against their will in Communist China. It’s a blink in time for most of us. In a few weeks, this “hostage situation” will be forgotten.

But it does raise important questions and resurrect some painful memories about other times in our history when we weren’t so fortunate.

When hostages were being held by Lebanese terrorists in the 1980s, the American people sat on pins and needles, waiting to see what would happen next. When the Iran-contra scandal broke in 1985, President Reagan denied knowing anything about the arms-for-hostages trade, and the affair left the American people bitter. Our men had been returned safely. But at what cost?

Although the recent conflict between the United States and China never escalated to the level of the foreign policy debacle of the 1980s, it should remind the Bush administration that diplomacy is not a game of chess, it involves human beings, who are not political pawns.

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