So, it wasn’t an “anomaly” after all.
An object spotted in the skies over Montana on Saturday that was initially dismissed as a “radar anomaly” by the North American Aerospace Command reappeared Sunday over Lake Huron, only to be downed by an American F-16, according to a Department of Defense news release.
And even though the release went out of its way to credit the shootdown order to President Joe Biden, the revelation is disastrous for his administration.
On a Super Bowl Sunday when Biden & Co. were no doubt hoping for a break from a week’s worth of news about China’s aggressiveness that made the White House look paralyzed and weak — at home and abroad — the bulletins kept getting worse.
A “national defense aerospace” condition had to be declared over Lake Michigan, clearing the skies of civilian air traffic for a time because of an unidentified potential threat.
Then an “airborne object” was shot down over Lake Huron — and it turned out to be the same “radar anomaly” that had sent fighter jets scrambling the day before, the news release stated.
“Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites.
“We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities,” the statement continued. “Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more.”
It’s great that there wasn’t a “kinetic military threat.”
On the other hand, it’s doubtful that Mr. and Mrs. America are thinking the Chinese hordes are going to come pouring across the border armed with balloons. Still, it’s reassuring that this particular balloon was apparently low on the kinetic threat scale.
What’s not reassuring, however, is that the United States is being led by a president who clearly presents no formidable figure to the country’s most formidable foes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin felt no compunction about invading Ukraine with Biden in the White House. (Democrats and Never Trump Republicans might want to remember that that never happened while President Donald Trump was in office.)
And Chinese President Xi Jinping’s communist dictatorship clearly has no fears of engaging in blatant violations of American sovereignty by launching surveillance craft over what even the Pentagon’s news released called “sensitive DoD sites.”
As former President Ronald Reagan understood, peace doesn’t just come through strength, it comes from the perception that that strength would be used.
No serious strategist in the world doubts that the United States has enough armaments to destroy any enemy. But it’s a good bet that there are more than a few strategists among American rivals and potential enemies who have very good reason to seriously doubt Biden’s willingness to use American strength if necessary.
This is the American president who all but greenlighted the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He’s the man who humiliated his country and betrayed its allies with the disgraceful departure from Afghanistan.
Most of all, he’s surrendered — deliberately — control over the country’s borders to uncounted millions of aliens, making entering the country illegally about as easy as shoplifting in San Francisco.
And now the military is using million-dollar weapons to shoot balloons out of the sky because the United States’ most powerful global rival knows perfectly well that Biden is too weak, hobbled by age, incompetence, or corruption (or some damnable combination of the three) to do anything about it that will matter.
Biden, even with the support of the see-no-Democratic-evil establishment media has a lot of explaining to do to the American public — though it’s unlikely to do much good.
The “anomaly” that disappeared over Montana and reappeared over Lake Huron might not have posed a “kinetic military threat,” but it gets clearer by the day that the inherent weakness and probably corruption of the Biden presidency is an actual threat to the continued security of the United States.
Conservatives, Republicans, and every American who gives a damn about the future of the country need to make sure that the Biden presidency passes into the history books and its policies with it.
When it comes to the survival of the United States — the principles it’s founded on and the institutions that have grown up within — it better be Biden who’s the “anomaly.”
A balloon will pass. His damage could be permanent.