Chinese BalloonGate has Popped

BalloonGate is officially done. It’s over. We did it. The evil balloon is now as destroyed as the US Military’s credibility. We shot it down. We got him. And by him I mean the inanimate object that was just sort of floating around in US and Canadian airspace.

Here’s (((David Frum))), the propagandist most responsible for the Iraq War, with a piece arguing that the balloon should not be shot down. It went live moments before the balloon was indeed shot down. As always, just let his bloviation wash over you. 

The Atlantic:

No Need to Pop This Balloon

The Chinese spy balloon observed over Montana is not a new departure. It is a provocative measure because countries claim more rights over the lower atmosphere above their territory than they do over the space beyond that. But the balloon’s presence is not exactly a step on the road to World War III. In fact, this type of surveillance is much more likely to prevent, rather than provoke, conflict.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, U.S. policy has been to welcome mutual aerial surveillance as a way to keep the peace.

Which is why they shot it down after almost a week of whining about it being there…

Back in 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower made the first proposal for an “Open Skies” international accord on such inspection systems. At the time, the Soviets rejected the offer, but the concept was revived after the Cold War and blossomed into a multination agreement signed in 1992. The Treaty on Open Skies licensed signatories to conduct a certain number of overflights each year in order to build confidence in one another’s peaceful intentions. Donald Trump’s administration proceeded to cancel U.S. participation in the agreement after his defeat in the election of November 2020.

China never signed up to the Open Skies Treaty. An authoritarian state that is becoming more so by the year, China thinks it enhances its security by concealing as much information as possible from the outside world. The U.S. nevertheless runs information-gathering missions off the coast of China—and rightly took offense when China forced down a U.S. Navy surveillance plane and detained its crew in April 2001.

Every government must protect some secrets. But Eisenhower’s wisdom is worth recalling: Mutual surveillance is mutually reassuring.

Jaime, can we pull up that screencap of all the propaganda outlets celebrating the balloon being shot down again please?

Rarely do good surprises occur between adversarial nations. Communicating more, rather than less, is far safer. Let the Chinese balloon alone—the message it can send home is that, for the sake of peace, a return to open skies is in everyone’s interest.

Let’s check in on that whole leaving the balloon alone thing.

That video is annoying, since they don’t actually show the shoot down. This one, originally captured by Jeri Lyn Hartzog Ridgeway, a normal person in the area, does. It’s also interesting since you can see how short the AAM’s burn time is by the lack of exhaust after just four seconds or so. Indicates that it’s an AIM-9, something confirmed by other articles.

I really cannot stress enough how utterly stupid this entire affair was. The balloon lasted almost exactly a full week in US airspace. They were whining about it spying on nuclear secrets in Montana, but then “decided,” to not shoot it down. After six days of not shooting it down, the (((Frum))) types penned their cope pieces about how it was totally intelligent policy to not shoot it down. In fact, not shooting it down proves how superior the USA is to “authoritarian” China, and also Biden to Orange Faggot. You see, the thinking person’s military policy is to not shoot it down.

Then they went and shot it down, making everyone look incredibly stupid in the process. Also, the altitude of that balloon had to be much lower than anticipated, because if an F-22 can shoot a sidewinder at it then it’s not at 120,000 feet altitude, especially if it only takes eight seconds or so for an AIM-9 to hit. All of which makes me think that China may not have been lying when they said that it was just a weather balloon that got blown off course. I mean, it’s funnier if it was a spy balloon, I’m just not convinced that it actually was. 

“Intelligence recorded ‘invaluable'”. Lol.

China has a huge network of spy satellites, and no one has explained to me the propulsion mechanism on the balloon. It may have one, but I can’t see it anywhere. Now sure, China may have predicted the air currents and intentionally launched a balloon to go along a certain path. They may also just have had a rogue balloon. The funniest explanation is that they intentionally put a balloon over the US just to fuck with them, and are laughing at this retarded response. It’s what I would do.

It cannot be undersold how idiotic ZOG’s response was. They make a huge deal out of something that might honestly be just a weather balloon that went off course, and will provide little utility to China more than their existing spy satellites. They then realize that they might fail in shooting it down, so they create some copes about how the depopulated areas of Montana are too heavily populated to risk the imperceptibly tiny chance of collateral damage that shooting it down might entail. Then they cope harder about how actually, they’re just really smart for not shooting it down. Intelligent people understand that letting your enemies surveil you is great. You’re too dumb to understand why.

Then they shoot it down over a more populated area of Carolina, thus invalidating all their previous copes. And after shooting it down, they proceed to try some Amurica FUCK yeah propaganda, despite this obviously being an epic fail, since they waited an entire week before doing this and it’s a fucking balloon.

This is one of the most retarded events I have ever covered.