That wasn’t the Sword of Damocles that went bob-bob-bobbin’ over the nation’s breadbasket last week. It was a ChiCom spy balloon that, if nothing else, succeeded in motivating the Republican members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation to react as if they had stepped barefoot in a puddle of hydrochloric acid.
The incident was not Pearl Harbor II. Nobody died or even experienced serious injury, unless you count the number of neck aches resulting from folks straining to look at the thing as it meandered 60,000 feet above the earth.
But listening to the likes of Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, Rep. Jamie Comer, R-Whereverhehangshishatishishome, Sen. Rand Paul, R-JeffYass, and even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, who is usually level-headed when it comes to foreign affairs, you would think that Mao was leading the People’s Liberation Army into San Francisco Bay.
Of course, the frothing-at-the-mouth reaction has little to do with the incident itself. Rather, it is another sluggish attempt to place all the blame for troubles in the world on President Biden, who ordered the invading balloon shot down to determine just what the troublesome Communist government might be up to.
Folks like Barr proved more critical of Biden than they were of the People’s Republic, which launched the doggone thing in the first place.
“It’s embarrassing,” Barr said on Fox News. “He’s once again projecting weakness. Weakness invites aggression, We saw that in Ukraine. We need to recognize that weakness will invite aggression with Taiwan and even over our own airspace.”
Perhaps in Andy’s world, therefore, invading Shanghai and nuking Beijing will provide Biden with the strength required to deal with the ChiComs.
Comer went a step further, introducing the possibility that the balloon might have appeared to sprinkle COVID-19 fairy dust across the heartland.
“Is it bioweapons in that balloon?” he asked on Fox News. “Did that balloon take off from Wuhan? We don’t know anything about that balloon.”
Also appearing on Fox News – see a pattern developing here? – Paul accused the administration of “ineptitude.”
“I think more damaging than any surveillance is assessing our response,” Paul said. “Since we’ve entered into a nuclear age, there are responses that have to occur in seconds to minutes, and the fact that this administration would dither for days over a balloon I think gives pause to us about how well we’re protected and whether or not they have the ability to make decisions that would have to be made in seconds or minutes.”
So, let us assess the response.
The Biden administration, early in its tenure, took steps to make spotting invasive conveyances like the balloon – the size of about three buses, by the way – easier. John Villasenor, director of the Institute for Technology, Law and Policy and a professor of electrical engineering, law, public policy and management at UCLA, told Scientific America that tracking can be problematic because “different materials will reflect radar differently.”
But White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. “enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace, we enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect.” As a result, the Defense Department determined that other ChiCom balloons entered U.S. airspace on three different occasions during the Trump administration without detection.
Officials said the balloon entered the U.S. air defense zone north of the Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28 before moving over Canada two days later. When it crossed back over into the U.S. on Jan. 31, Defense Department officials became sufficiently concerned to brief Biden, who immediately ordered that it be shot down. Military officials recommended a delay, suggesting that any debris from the destroyed balloon could have an impact on population centers. It finally was destroyed on Feb. 4 when it ventured off the South Carolina coast over the Atlantic Ocean.
By that time, authorities had already determined the balloon didn’t represent a physical threat. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that steps were taken to “mitigate” the instruments on the craft, rendering it unable to conduct its spying mission. Simultaneously, the U.S. was “increasing and improving our ability to collect intelligence and information from it.”
“We’re still analyzing the information that we were able to collect off of the balloon before we shot it out of the sky…” Kelly said.
To summarize: Authorities discovered the balloon early thanks to enhancements implemented by the Biden administration. The Chinese had used balloons before under a different administration that went undetected. Biden was advised when it re-entered U.S. airspace and ordered it shot down. The order was delayed until the conveyance, which was mitigated to render it ineffective, was over water.
It all seems fairly clean but that didn’t stop some members of the Kentucky delegation from acting like drunken yokels at a hoochie-coochie show. Weakness isn’t a factor, unless the apple of every MAGA eye, Donald J. Trump, was similarly a 98-pound weakling – and we know the latter part of that description ain’t true. The balloon didn’t contain bioweapons and the response was immediate.
China’s illegal incursion into U.S. territory is, obviously, cause for concern and warrants some response. But wetting your pants over the whole thing is absurd. China has its eyes on us, balloon or no balloon. It has satellites roaming overhead in a regular cycle snapping high-definition photos. They’re likely using drones when the opportunity presents itself. The balloon is just one trick in a very large bag.
And, you know what? The U.S. has satellites and drones as well. Do you think some of those gadgets are focused in on Beijing?
But it’s all part of the game with the new, belligerent Republican Party – raise a ruckus at every opportunity, legitimate or not, to feed the base and hope that the never-ending nitwittery escapes the consciousness of responsible voters. The strategy, if that’s what it can be called, was in evidence Tuesday night during Biden’s State of the Union address when the House floor was transformed into a Royal Rumble wrestling ring, with catcalls and jeers in an attempt to transform democracy into mob rule, something the nation experienced on Jan. 6, 2021.
It could also be found Wednesday at a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, chaired by our own Jamie Comer, seeking to justify the fantasy that the FBI and other agencies pressured Twitter into killing the posting of claims about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and a laptop that contained not only information about his business dealings but naughty photos that anyone would want to hide.
The hearing was filled with the by-now usual Republican huffing and puffing. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-TX threatened the former Twitter executives called to testify with jail time for what he characterized as a plot to “interfere with the United States of America 2020 presidential election.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, going through her list of grievances and Comer calling President Biden a liar. It’s all there.
The only thing missing was evidence that anyone – the FBI, Biden, the man in the moon – did anything to stop Twitter from suppressing any tweets about the source of the laptop. In fact, it turned out Trump administration officials were the only ones to contact the social media site about killing a tweet.
It was an embarrassment.
“We have members threatening witnesses with arrest and prosecution for clearly imaginary offenses, or at least offenses that might make sense in their mind, but I don’t know what they would be,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, the panel’s ranking member.
We know it takes a lot of hot air to fill a balloon. Now we know that the heads of some of these guys have similar content.
I love how you describe things, events and people.
Happy Birthday