Oooooh The Humanity

The drama of a Chinese Civilian Airship (cum) Spy Balloon floating over North America has certainly been an embarrassment for Old Uncle Joe what with Xi Jinping giving him the finger over this.

Was this because Chinese hardliners wanted to upstage the planned summit between Antony Blinken and Xi Jinping thus nixing the opportunity for the first US Secretary of State to sit down with the Chinese Premier in nearly six years and the first of Uncle Joe's Cabinet Secretaries to visit China?  

Or was it retaliation for neutralizing and isolating China from the global semi-conductor manufacturing sphere?

Or was this a consequence of the US Navy aggressively exercising Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait (without violating Chinese airspace)?  

Or was it something as benign as clumsy carelessness and gross incompetence?

Or something else?

Out of an abundance of patience and forbearance this blogger is satisfied to wait a bit and see what comes from the salvage of this airship and allow smarter minds in the intelligence community to analyze it, reverse engineer it, scavenge information pre and post-flight and see if this might not be a net intelligence gain for the US.

What I do know is that out of an abundance of patience and forbearance; and on the advice of the military and intelligence community, Old Uncle Joe waited to splash the balloon only after it had safely drifted beyond the mainland and could be dropped into salt water.

Was the overflight of a Chinese balloon an urgent matter of national security to us and our friendly neighbors to the north?  Or was it a turgid assault on the national pride of some of my countrymen?

I can only speculate on this, but what I do know is that last Friday and Saturday there was ample evidence of some of my FB friends wasting valuable bandwidth as they got their undies in a twist over (get this) our woke military and senile president didn't shoot down the balloon (including in the sovereign airspace of our friendly neighbors to the north) immediately.  Woke military?  Between you and me that seems a bit over the top.

My hypothesis is these individuals were going to shout at their handheld devices and furiously broadcast their rage if Old Uncle Joe didn't put the trigger immediately.  And if Old Uncle Joe did pull the trigger and something on the order of two to three school buses worth of debris dropped to earth and crushed a school, flattened a business park, set a neighborhood on fire or killed a single Montana steer and possibly hurt or killed a bunch of people they would howl their outrage over that too.  Only louder.  Anti-Biden people gonna howl their outrage one way or the other.  They got grievances - plenty too.  I get it. And I got no problem with it.  There was a Full Snow Moon out this weekend - which explains much of the howling.  It must really suck to go thru life humping the burden of all of those grievances.  But I digress.

What they won't grouse about is that the Chinese Communist Party has been launching these balloons for more than a decade.  According to the Pentagon five have successfully circumnavigated the globe, three that intruded into our airspace during for the reign of the Former Guy and one additional intrusion earlier in the Current Guy's administration.  Including a second over Latin America.  Granted, and speaking only domestically, the former incursions were not as lengthy as the most recent; nevertheless before you hurry-up and shoot something down you need to ponder basic stuff such as what toxic or dangerous substances might be present in the payload.  Consider our policy not to routinely shoot down other nation's satellites in low earth orbit. From 1992 to 2020 we adhered to an Open Skies Treaty with the Soviets.  (Trump withdrew from that treaty).  We got history with restraint.

Given all of the forgoing I think an abundance of patience and forbearance was in order and am perfectly fine with waiting until yesterday for the balloon's demise over open water. 

We shot down the assholes' balloon, the summit was been cancelled, the Chinese now have another grievance to howl-about on top of being largely shut-out of the semiconductor trade.

My only grievance is that we couldn't capture the airship intact so we could proudly parade it in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as a propaganda prize and give Xi Jinping the finger.

In the meantime, a retired pal of mine in Myrtle Beach sent me some photos of the shoot down.  They were really cool.  And out of an abundance of caution, patience, forbearance and respect for his privacy I'll not post them here for everyone on the interweb to see.  

Instead there is this....

Not So Secret German Spy Balloon

Stay-tuned.  There's so much more to learn.  

And if you are aggrieved - by all means - HOWL!