The Chinese Communist Government has condemned the U.S. action to bring down its spy balloon and is insisting the balloon had no military purpose.
“For the United States to insist on using armed force is clearly an excessive reaction that seriously violates international convention,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “China will resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprise involved, and retains the right to respond further.”
The statement suggests that the “enterprise involved” is a civilian business or agency not connected to the military.
The U.S. is justifying the shootdown by citing the UN Charter’s Article 61, which gives member states the right to self-defense. Joe Biden may not have taken that right very seriously after allowing the ballon free passage over the U.S. for four days. Only the cameraphone of a citizen in Montana who caught Biden with his pants down and a balloon overhead is the reason we know about the balloon at all.
The balloon was shot down by an F-22 Raptor from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base which fired a single AIM-9X Sidewinder missile that downed the balloon from an altitude of 58,000 feet. The balloon was as high as 65,000 feet.
The moment of impact.
ICYMI: #WATCH: Incredible HD video of the moment the #Chinese #surveillance #balloon was shot down by a single missile from an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base #ChinaSpyBalloon #ChinaBalloon pic.twitter.com/sHITdEfVV2
— Video Forensics (@Video_Forensics) February 5, 2023
The Chinese Foreign Ministry hit back at the U.S. on Saturday in a statement, alleging that some politicians and the media have “hyped” up the situation in order to “attack and smear China.”
The U.S. military waited to shoot down the balloon until Saturday afternoon, when it was over water off the coast of South Carolina, due to safety concerns. They are now working to recover debris and intelligence information, according to officials.
Once the balloon was in a position to surveil critical facilities and locations, it should have been blown back to Beijing and the pieces recovered. But Biden chose to hide his weakness, hoping to salvage the Blinken-Xi meeting and avoid a political blowup.
The White House can keep repeating that it didn’t shoot the balloon down sooner in order to avoid dangerous falling debris. How very nice of them. But it doesn’t explain why we didn’t blow it out of the sky when it was over the desolate high plains of Montana or the Rocky Mountains. We might not have been able to recover as much debris but then, the threat would have been neutralized.
Another trope being used by the White House was the balloon wasn’t a “threat” to civilians or the military. I beg to differ. While the Chinese have plenty of satellite sensors trained on our missile fields, there’s a huge difference between capturing images from 90-120 miles above the earth a few minutes at a time 16 times a day as the satellite orbits the earth and having a balloon floating above missile fields for several hours.
The congressional inquiry into this incident is already being shaped into one of triumph for Biden and sour politics by Republicans. Let’s hope it goes a little deeper than that.
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