The current situation involving 24 American hostages being held in China needs to come to an end, immediately. That is obvious; the questions that need to be asked are: How did we end up in this mess, and is the Bush administration doing the right thing?

You don’t hear too much about what got us into this situation, but it is pretty obvious. The left is to blame here. Bill Clinton and the rest of his clan have made the American public think that a communist country is not all that bad.

Why would the leader of the free world do such a thing?

Money, plain and simple. He wanted to win the presidency so he compromised every single American’s life so Red China would help fund the “Demacommies.”

Think about this, the Democrats have made us think that China is changing, that they are supposedly moving toward capitalism.

Yeah, now you can eat at McDonald’s without being locked up, but if you say you prefer Arby’s, you get life in prison. That is freedom in a communist society.

The fact is, China is not growing toward freedom, and it does not want to give its citizens personal freedoms. Why? Because once someone has power, he or she will not give it up.

If you think someone will actually decrease the size of government, you are wrong. Take, for instance, President Bush. He is of course a Republican, the party that stands for a smaller government, yet he still plans on increasing government spending by 4 percent.

I am not tearing down the Republican party; I am simply making a point. Government does not shrink, and that is why the Chinese will not be free without some sort of revolt.

We have been forced to accept the Red for the last eight years; it is time our government starts acting “Reaganesque” and stops putting up with tyrants.

So, the left is to blame for this problem. They are the ones who told us to trust the untrustable. However, the right is not to go without blame.

President Bush and the National Security Council have by no means acted perfect in the last week.

The team of brilliant military advisers has had several options here. The most extreme is of course taking military action. Obviously that is out of the question.

The hostage situation is not one that needs to result in a full-blown war. Anyone with common sense can tell you that. If you think it is the correct choice, think again.

Look at what Clinton did to our military. It would be a difficult task to fight the most populated country in the world when we are too busy policing every third-world country that exists.

On the extreme, the president could apologize to the Chinese like they are asking. Some leftists think this would solve the problem quickly and think Bush should do it even if he doesn’t mean it.

There are several reasons this would be a bad idea. First of all, think about what that will do to our world status. It would look like we are at China’s mercy. Aside from China, other countries would view us as just another world player instead of a world leader.

As for other tyrannical governments, such as Iraq, what would they think about us? They would laugh at us. Do we want them to think we are weak so they can cause even more trouble?

Would an apology prevent this from happening again? No, it would only encourage it. In all honesty, the United States has nothing to be sorry for. We were spying on China, just as they spy on us. We were over international waters, not their land, and our massive surveillance plane collided with a fighter jet.

Think about this, a huge plane collided with a fighter jet. Our surveillance plane, a Navy E-P3, was big enough to hold 24 people. The Chinese fighter jet was big enough to hold one pilot and designed to maneuver with the best of them. Despite this some are still saying this was an accident.

It is similar to a Porsche colliding with a back hoe. Clearly a Porsche can out-move a back hoe, just as a fighter jet can out-maneuver a tank of a plane.

That deserves no apology. It was either a result of “child’s play” or a deliberate attack on the United States.

In the view of the Chinese, it is our fault and an apology is a must. In a letter written to President Bush, Ruan Guoqin, the wife of Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot who died after the collision, had the nerve to tell the president he is “cowardly” because he won’t apologize.

She wrote, “What is incredible is you and your government’s apathetic attitude toward my husband’s life.”

It is a tragedy someone had to die, but there are reports out saying the pilot was flying three feet from the E-P3 before the collision. And they want us to say we are sorry. It reminds me of an old saying, “You play with fire, you get burned.”

President Bush has taken what I consider to be a rather weak stance on this issue. He has hinted that this might eventually lead to bad relations if the 24 Americans are not let go.

I disagree with what the President is doing to bring these people home. It is time he says to Red China “Enough.” Tell them if they do not let the hostages go, then we will take our business elsewhere.

How about not giving them the Olympics they want so bad? Use the World Trade Organization to make them send our guys home. Things like this. He needs to stand firm ground and stop worrying about people not liking what he says.

Obviously China will not release the hostages if we simply say we regret what happened. We have to hit them where it counts, the pocket book.

Tell them all ports in the United States will be closed to the Chinese until the hostages are let go. Anything that makes the communists look inferior to us. We should be in control, not them.

It is time to stop trusting these people, especially with our soldiers. In the letter to the president, Ruan wrote that we “do not have to worry about [the hostages] at all.”

Should we believe that? I think not.

Zach Calef is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids.