American Scholar Lambastes U.S. Approach on Collision Incident

The U.S. approach in handling the ongoing spy plane incident has demonstrated that the country wants to do whatever it likes, but tries to exempt itself from the very laws it applies to others, a behavior that has aroused worldwide hatred, an American scholar said.

"China has never done anything (wrong) to us. We must demand that our own government stop the spying, bombing, and killing," said Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

In an article published by a news website, Rockwell refuted the U.S. claim that the incident occurred in "international airspace," stressing that such a rule was set up "unilaterally by the U.S. government and accepted by no one else."

A U.S. military surveillance plane rammed and damaged a Chinese military jet over the South China Sea and landed on Hainan Island without China's permission on April 1. Washington has so far refused to offer an apology but demanded the aircraft not be boarded and that China immediately return the craft and its crew.

"The space where the collision occurred is normally used to facilitate commerce, not hostile military activities," Rockwell said.

"But in U.S. foreign policy, there is a presumption that the whole world is a playground for the U.S. government to do what it wants," he added.

He said that it is "preposterous" for the United States to claim that its spy plane landing in the Chinese territory is " sovereign property."

"The U.S. spy plane was seeking to intercept communications and rip off information for U.S. military advantage ... This makes it an aggressor against China, just as the U.S. considers any attempt to spy on us to be an aggression and evidence of hostility," he added.

Rockwell noted that China's protest is understandable since the U.S. spy plane landed at a Chinese military airport and its crew members never asked permission to do so.

Furthermore, the U.S. crew ended up in safe landing but the Chinese pilot is still missing, adding to the victim list of three Chinese journalists who died in NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade about two years ago, he said.

"How long can one country be subjected to murderous attacks from the United States before it begins to complain? But if do complain, this is decried in the United States as 'nationalism,'" Rockwell said.

The American scholar also cited two hard facts to contradict U. S. objection to China's handling of the U.S. spy plane. One is U.S. refusal to comply to Moscow's demand for the immediate return of a MiG fighter after a defector flew the plane to Japan in 1976. The aircraft was eventually sent back to Moscow "in packing crates" after the United States took the whole thing apart.

Another instance is Washington's attempt in the 1970s to raise a Soviet submarine from the ocean to obtain military equipment from hostile nations.

"It is not the first time" that the United States should bear the responsibility for the fatal errors it has made onto other countries, he said, citing the reckless flight by U.S. fighter pilots that cut ski cables in Italy, and killed 20 civilians and the recent show-off cruise of a submarine that sunk a Japanese school boat and killed nine, including four 17-year-old kids.

Rockwell also ridiculed the "double standard" Washington has adopted on the spy issue. When there was a need, the United States could cook up a "spy" case against China, but it tried hard to support its own spy activities to meet its security need, he said.

"The U.S. has fulminated for years about supposed spying by China against the United States. Remember the Cox Report? For all of its bluster, it never went so far as to accuse China of flying spy planes around our borders. But it turns out that the U.S. regards such activity as routine and justifiable, if directed against other countries," he said.

Despite all the mistreatment, Beijing doesn't want war, Rockwell said. "It wants the United States to behave like a responsible trading partner, not the world hegemony it has become, " he added.

Rockwell called on American citizens to "join their friends across the ocean and protest U.S. imperial adventures."

Rockwell also urged U.S. media commentators to cut out "the absurd Cold War language of belligerency, lies and reprisal."

People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/