Still, I can't help seeing this Chinese business in sexual terms. America is like a horny, macho man. Never mind that China is all those thousands of miles from home. We fly over it, like a voyeuristic stud driving around the block, taking pictures of the girls, getting their stats and so on. He lands in China, of course.
China is afraid of America as the USSR once was.
China was scared of us during the Vietnam War, which was as if China had shipped men and arms overseas to fight a war in Mexico. As it is, President Bush and his gang are saying the plane is just the same as sovereign U.S. territory, when anyone with plain sense can see that it made an aggressive, voyeuristic gesture meant to raise fears. In 1976, a Soviet defector flew a MIG-25 to Japan and asked for asylum. The Soviets said the plane was theirs, and they complained that holding it was against the law. U.S. authorities kept it for nine weeks, minutely inspected it and finally sent it back to the Soviet Union in packing cases.