China's South America

American Spectator ^ | 22 May 06 | Jed Babbin

[rellimpank]

Americans are suffering a new psychological disorder: news-induced political numbness. It's not the return of Jimmy Carter's "malaise." Despite the steady stream of Congressional absurdities and conservatives' growing impatience with the president, we're doing pretty well for a nation at war. But the incessant 24/7 television-newspaper-Internet barrage has caused people to tune the world out instead of reserving energy to think about the events that must be the focus of our attention. All of us, especially the White House, desperately want a break to rest and recuperate. But that's not an option. Times are tough, and we just have to keep going.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Good article and I hope Mr. Babbin is right about ur response to China and Chavez.

[El Gato]

The last time China engaged in such a test, an American Navy EP-3 Orion was forced down on Hainan Island and the crew held hostage for a week to China's demand for an apology from President Bush

This a little disingenuous. The EP-3 was struck by a Chinese jet, which was indeed "challenging" the US aircraft, but well away from Hainan Island in international airspace. But even if one assumes that the Chinese pilot deliberately committed suicide, a doubtful proposition given the details of what happened, the more likely outcome would have been for the EP-3 to end up in the South China sea, not on Hainan Island.

Only through the quick and competent action of the commander, Lt. Shawn Osborne, and crew, was the aircraft able to make it to Hainan Island. Many here thought the aircraft should have ditched at sea, even at the loss of the crew, rather than land on Red Chinese territory. Be that as it may, it's pretty obvious that the Chinese on Hainan Island had no idea the EP-3 was coming.

The Central government did move quickly to take advantage of the incident to try to humiliate the United States, but of course we wouldn't have expected anything else, would we?

BTW, the EP-3 was flown back, disassembled, to the Lockeed plant, rebuilt and is presumably sniffing around the Chinese, Iranians and others once again.