Letter: U.S.’s rhetoric doesn’t change facts on China

Tuesday, April 17, 2001 | 9:14 a.m.

We got caught with our hand in the cookie jar. No amount of posturing and name-calling can alter that fact. From the rhetoric coming out of Washington, one might think that the Chinese did something wrong in retaining the crew of the spy plane.

Am I the only person in America wondering why we were spying on a friendly nation? What information were we looking for with a 24-member crew: how they can make Army berets cheaper than we can?

Our government is trying to determine exactly what happened. Who cares? If a Chinese spy plane had invaded our airspace, we would have shot it down, no questions asked. What kind of apology would we have demanded if one of our pilots had died? What amount of compensation would we have insisted upon?

Who cares that 51 percent of the people agree with the president's hard-line approach. They are probably the macho rednecks who only read the comics and the sports pages. What do they know about diplomacy?

SID SHERMAN