When Jesse Jackson offered his services to try to break the impasse over China’s detention of an American surveillance plane and its crew members, I wondered what took him so long.
Love him or hate him–and there are many who do both at the same time– Jackson seemed tailor-made for the impasse over the Navy’s EP-3E surveillance plane and its 24 crew members by the time the standoff entered its second week.
China and the Bush administration were at loggerheads over whether the United States should “apologize” for the incident. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell only went so far as to express “regret” and say the U.S. is sorry for the incident.
However, Jackson said in a CNN interview Tuesday that we might as well go all the way and apologize. The difference between the words “regret,” “sorry” and “apology” is not great enough to keep Americans away from their homes and families, he said.
Jackson even brought up the stubborn refusal of many Americans to apologize for slavery as an example of how stubborn today’s Yanks can be about such matters.
Well, sorry, Reverend, but, as a fellow descendant of slaves, I am all the more aware of the significant difference between the two words. Unlike “regret” and “sorry,” “apology” carries with it an acceptance of responsibility.
Even by the Chinese accounts, it is hard to say that we are to blame for the episode. A Chinese pilot appears to have collided with the EP-3E while trying to intimidate its pilot and crew over international waters.
China deserved an apology when Americans accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. It does not deserve an apology for the plane incident.
An apology would force the United States to accept China’s version of events. It would expose the United States to liability and some form of penalties, either now or in future trade and diplomatic discussions.
Apology would make the United States and its new president look weaker in the eyes of Asia and the rest of the world and diplomatically betray Taiwan and other critical allies.
But it doesn’t help either side for the crisis to drag on. Since Deng Xiaoping died in 1997, no figure has risen who comes close to matching his power, influence or credibility with the republic’s powerful military. The Communist Party faces a leadership reshuffle next year.
Neither President Jiang Zemin nor his rivals want to offend the military by appearing to be too conciliatory. But they don’t want to offend the rest of the world, either, at a time when China hopes to expand its foreign trade and host the Olympics.
Enter Jackson. Visiting China on his own and against the expressed wishes of the Bush administration, he can apologize as much as he wants. Bush and Powell can claim quite correctly that Jackson does not speak for them, yet China’s leaders can claim, if only to each other, that Jackson offers the views of “real” Americans who are silenced by the imperialist, capitalistic, blah-blah lap dogs in the White House.
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It may sound far-fetched, but when you look closely, that scenario pretty well describes the way Jackson has helped free political captives ever since he won the release of downed Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman Jr. in Syria in 1984. Former President Ronald Reagan’s people opposed Jackson’s “freelance diplomacy” in public. But when Goodman came home, Reagan gave him a Rose Garden welcome–with Jackson, who eagerly made ample use of the microphone .
Similar outcomes occurred when Jackson helped win the release of 48 political prisoners in Cuba a few months later, more than 700 foreign “human shields” in Iraq in 1990 and three American military prisoners in Yugoslavia in 1998.
Jackson’s recent scandalous headlines in the National Enquirer and other media actually may be a benefit in this matter. He has respect in China and the rest of the underdeveloped world in ways unmatched by any other non-office holder, except perhaps Muhammad Ali. On the international stage, Jackson’s scandals at home look to many like the work of a white conservative establishment out to topple him, not the result of his own failures to keep himself out of hot water.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine how Jackson could make the crisis worse. If he failed to free our crewmen, Bush could say truthfully that he had nothing to do with it. If he succeeded, the administration would be so delighted that they wouldn’t have time to care that a freelance diplomat helped to resolve it.
Still, as Jackson said, there are some who are “so hateful, they would rather see the soldiers remain there than for me to bring them out. But that would be irrational.”
Powell confirmed Jackson’s offer Tuesday but said the administration would not need the civil rights leader’s help. Still, it is hard to imagine that Powell and Bush would not be intrigued by the possibility of Jackson going to China.
After all, they might imagine, maybe China would keep him.
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