No apologies from U.S.

Already the Bush administration is under attack from hacks and flacks on the right and left about its allegedly poor handling of China's leaders during their detention of 24 U.S. crewmen, forced to land at a southern Chinese airbase on Hainan Island after one of Beijing's jet jockeys ran into their EP-3E surveillance plane April 1.

The terms "appeasement" and "weakness" have already been thrown up by so-called visionaries and hawks alike, claiming that President Bush and his foreign policy team "blew it" by "bending over" for Beijing. But the administration did nothing of the sort.

I want to be one of the first to publicly commend the Bush administration -- and in particular, President Bush -- for the way in which this incident was handled. Finally, mature foreign policy being managed by grown-ups and realists, not bought-and-paid-for ideologues and liberal apologists for America's enemies.

If you read reports that the U.S. had apologized to China for this incident, as many people told me they had, you should know that such a claim is as patently false as it is irresponsible.

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We didn't apologize for jack. The Chinese will spin it as though we did, but they have to -- saving face means everything to China's prideful leadership.

All we said was "sorry" for the alleged loss of China's F-8 pilot; and we "apologized" that "the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance" -- but the administration did not "appease China" by apologizing for the incident itself or for conducting the surveillance missions in the first place, as Beijing had publicly sought.

Nor did the letter make any mention of discontinuing those flights -- especially since, as the Washington Times reported Tuesday, China continues such flights against Taiwan and Vietnam -- nor did we say we did not expect China to return our aircraft. Quite the opposite, in fact.

By not mentioning the discontinuation of flights -- and pairing that omission with several administration and Pentagon statements this week noting that such flights would indeed continue -- there is no reason to assume they won't.

Furthermore, the letter specifically mentioned the return of our aircraft. In a meeting proposed for April 18, the letter said the "meeting agenda would include discussion of the causes of the incident, possible recommendations whereby such collisions could be avoided in the future, development of a plan for prompt return of the EP-3 aircraft, and other related issues."

Granted, China forced our plane to become damaged in the first place, and probably forced it to land at Hainan -- but trust me, both countries know who was at fault here, and they know it wasn't us. And yes, we lost an advanced surveillance plane -- but they lost one of their most advanced fighters, something they can't really afford right now. And, we didn't lose any personnel, thank God.

Now I don't know about you, but all in all, I'd say we came out of this as well as can be expected. And for the record, I personally did not believe this incident was worthy of a declaration of war or some kind of punitive military strike against China, as some people have suggested.

Those of you who did think so either need to put your thinking caps on or put down whatever it is you've been smoking, drinking or snorting.

No one in their right mind should have wanted to see World War III erupt over this. Even people who suggested we should send a cruise missile to Hainan Island to blow up what remained of our plane seemed to forget that the plane was sitting on Chinese territory and that such an attack would have been akin to a act of war -- just as such an attack would have been akin to an act of war if the situation were reversed.

Though a letter has been released publicly, the truth is that just a precious few people right now actually know what was said between both nations' diplomats and what went on behind the scenes to get this done.

I have no clue what those negotiations actually consisted of, but if I had to guess, I'd say the Bush administration was a helluva lot more forceful with the Chinese than, say, a Bill Clinton or an Al Gore would have been. After all, when you're bought and paid for, you don't mouth the owner.

So if this incident had to happen at all, Americans are lucky that it happened with professionals at the helm and not a bunch of co-opted perpetual campaigners who demonstrated time and again that, "It's not foreign policy, stupid."

In fact, now that this incident is over, what happens next is infinitely more important.

For instance, it is my hope is that the Bush administration moves quickly to ditch U.S. Ambassador to China Adm. Joseph Prueher; a Clinton appointee, he is a known China supporter and has no place in this administration's China policy process because the U.S. should not desire to engage in the same kind of China policies adopted by Prueher's former boss.

I also hope the administration made it clear that if our plane was actually shot at, as reports have suggested, that U.S. fighters will immediately "protect" our planes and military assets against such attacks in the future. We don't shoot at Chinese planes, ships or bases; we shouldn't put up with them shooting U.S. military assets, either. Hey -- if we're not prepared to protect our assets, then we shouldn't deploy them in potentially hostile regions, right?

And, my hope is that the Bush administration begins to work on revising China's permanent trade status with the U.S. so that if any more "incidents" happen down the road, the president will have the authority to automatically revoke that trade status until such time as Beijing believes it can be a responsible world player. We shouldn't maintain China's $70 billion-plus annual trade surplus with America if Beijing's leaders are going to behave like belligerent SOBs.

Lastly, the Bush administration should probably sell Taiwan whatever it wants and can afford in terms of advanced U.S. weaponry. China's belligerence is not going to improve, but through strength maybe both nations can at least hem Beijing in.

Because Bush did not appear on television daily just to hear himself blather on about non-developments does not mean the administration wasn't working on angles unbeknownst to the rest of us, to secure the release of our servicemen and women. That was the most important goal here, after all, lest we forget.

The Bush administration got us out of this mess without our having to say we're sorry -- just like officials said they would. We may have lost a valuable surveillance asset, but believe me, it could have been much worse.

And here's another thought: It could just be that this entire incident taught us more about China, its current leaders, and current military capabilities than all the data collected by our EP-3E.