America: Weaker Than a Balloon

Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on February 5.
U.S. Navy

America: Weaker Than a Balloon

Whatever remains unknown about the Chinese balloon, one thing is obvious: For more than 3,600 miles and six days, American power was humiliated.

Is there any aspect of America that Joe Biden will defend? He opened our borders to mass migration, criminals and terrorists. Our bases, helicopters and weapons in Afghanistan he gift-wrapped for the Taliban. And he let a huge, potentially dangerous, easy-to-destroy Chinese balloon float over the nation for almost a week.

Was it a civilian weather probe, a spy airship, an electromagnetic pulse delivery system, or some other type of weapon? We do not yet know the details, but what we do know is that the military identified it as a surveillance airship immediately, yet waited to shoot it down until it finished doing what it was almost certainly designed to do: detect American vulnerabilities, test the resolve of American leadership, and humiliate a nation too weak-willed to use its own power.

The United States military finally shot down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off of South Carolina on February 5. The joke was that the Biden regime leaped into action once the balloon started drifting in the general direction of Ukraine. It was no joke that it had publicly allowed the Chinese asset to complete its flight over thousands of miles of U.S. heartland, apparently including nuclear missile installations at Malmstrom Air Force Base and possibly elsewhere.

The balloon’s sensors and other equipment are now at the bottom of coastal waters, and U.S. Navy divers are investigating. So we may or may not find out the truth about its specific capabilities and purpose. But we have already found out the general and most important thing we needed to find out.

The mere existence and provocative flight path of this balloon have shown Americans and people around the world that the American regime under Joe Biden (and Barack Obama) is unable or unwilling to defend America!

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with top military officers and decided not to shoot down the balloon. The reason given was that the resulting debris could fall on something or someone, even though the balloon was above the least densely populated states in the country. But they let it float across Alaska, then part of Canada, then Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“What began as a spy balloon has become a trial balloon testing President Biden’s strength and resolve, and unfortunately the president failed that test,” Sen. Tom Cotton, a member of the Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Fox News after the balloon was finally downed. “And that’s dangerous for the American people. The president was paralyzed for an entire week by a balloon. We should have shot this balloon down over the Aleutian Islands. We should never have allowed it to transit the entire continental United States.”

Cotton said Biden’s delay was driven by a desire to avoid “any action that would be viewed as provocative or confrontational towards the Chinese Communists.” Many conservative analysts agree with him. Also on Fox News, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo characterized the airship as a “trial balloon to figure out how the United States would respond,” and that “the Biden administration failed.” Investigative journalist Lee Smith said on Twitter that the real “message of the balloon” is that the U.S. is not “on the verge of war with Beijing”—because American elites are 100 percent “beholden to China.”

What a dreadful, shameful foreign-policy episode for America! Secretary of State Antony Blinken had scheduled an official visit to China to reduce tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. But instead of being grateful that the Biden administration was reaching out, Chinese leaders decided to send some sort of reconnaissance balloon straight into U.S. airspace. Blinken postponed his meeting due to negative press coverage of the balloon incident, while military leaders hem-hawed about the appropriate course of action. But nothing about the Biden administration’s handling of this incident telegraphed strength.

The Biden administration is still seeking to improve relations with Red China, even after this major diplomatic—and perhaps significant military—incident, as if nothing had happened. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said that China may have intentionally flown a spy balloon over the U.S. to send the world a message that America is in decline. How much more bold will America’s enemies be to commit espionage against the U.S. now that they know how weak the Biden regime is?

Worsening the situation even further is a subsequent claim that China has sent high-altitude reconnaissance airships over the American homeland before. Some in Washington are reporting that China sent more than one during the presidency of Donald Trump, yet Secretary of Defense James Mattis decided not to inform the president. Military leaders reportedly hid this—and who knows what else—from Trump because they viewed him as too aggressive and feared he would do something provocative, as if it is “provocative” to defend your borders!

This is treason if true. It means General Mattis allowed China to spy on U.S. installations, while hiding this from his superior, the elected commander in chief of the United States. Imagine how confident China must feel knowing that America has generals who will protect the politburo of the Chinese Communist Party from an American president who would try to stop their spying.

John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, is reporting that the balloon was much more maneuverable than expected. Yet the line coming from Biden regime people is that this could well be a simple weather balloon that wandered off course, as the Chinese government claims.

Why are America’s generals and intelligence operatives so quick to believe Communist China? We know from Chinese dissidents that Chinese spy networks in the United States include up to 25,000 intelligence officers and 18,000 recruited agents. China continues committing ongoing thefts of U.S. technology and intellectual property. China is definitely actively spying on America. Yet no major political figures other than Donald Trump and his close associates seem to have the courage to state the obvious and stand up to China!

Don’t forget that shocking Di Dongsheng video from within China. Speaking at a Nov. 28, 2020, event hosted by the Chinese nationalistic website Guan Video, the Renmin University of China economics professor said:

The Trump administration is in a trade war with us, so why can’t we fix the Trump administration? Why between 1992 and 2016 did China and the U.S. used to be able to settle all kinds of issues? No matter what kind of crises we encountered … things were solved in no time. … We fixed everything in two months. What is the reason? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here. It’s just because we have people at the top. At the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence, we have our old friends.

Di was openly bragging that China has basically controlled every U.S. presidential administration since the Clinton administration—with one notable exception. China had “people at the top” with Bill Clinton, with George W. Bush, with Barack Obama, and now with Joe Biden—but it couldn’t “fix” the administration of Donald Trump.

Allowing China to become increasingly powerful and provocative has been normal for China’s “old friends” at “America’s core inner circle of power and influence.” A spy airship, visible to the public, over the mainland United States, for several days and thousands of miles, would just be the next step of degrading America from its former status as a superpower.

This is yet another example of something the Trumpet has emphasized and warned about for decades: America’s will is broken! Even though it possesses the most powerful military in world history by far, it has lost its will to use it! This incident perfectly illustrates Leviticus 26:19: “And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass.” The world’s most advanced warplane, a $227 million F-22 Raptor, struck down the balloon with a single $400,000 AIM-9 air-to-air missile—but it wasn’t authorized to do so until after the apparently thorough surveillance and thorough humiliation of America.

At least the spy balloon incident has highlighted the relationship between America and China in a way ordinary citizens can understand. Decades ago, the late Herbert W. Armstrong warned that an important factor that would strip America of its historically unprecedented, God-given blessings was its infiltration by Communist forces. And now Americans have stood on their front porches, looked up, and seen that American elites are “beholden to China.”

Why is it that American leaders are more submissive to Chinese Communists than to the American people? Why is it that American leaders lack the strength of will to make even obvious, simple decisions? Why are they so bold to hide information from a strong leader like President Trump and so weak before adversarial leaders like Xi Jinping? Why is our will broken?

Read the rest of Leviticus 26: We have not hearkened unto God, have not kept His commandments, have despised His statutes and abhorred His judgments, and have broken His covenant. In fact, many people have rejected His very existence! Even most Christians reject or have never been taught that the unparalleled blessings that the U.S. is absolutely saturated with came from the Creator God through His promises to America’s ancestors. In Leviticus 26 and elsewhere, God specifically, clearly told the Israelites and their descendants that they would be blessed if they obeyed, like Abraham did, and that they would be cursed if they disobeyed.

Look around. Look up. Is America a blessed nation that has turned ignorantly, spitefully, abhorrently disobedient and is now seeing those same blessings disappearing, one by one? You are living fulfilled prophecy.

God repeatedly warned Israel against forsaking His law and looking to foreigners for prosperity, protection and guidance. Isaiah 2:6 says that God has “forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.” Americans today have committed this same sin. Rather than trusting God to bless and defend us, we have traded with Communist dictatorships guilty of using slave labor and have even invited Communist professors from China and other nations to teach generations of our young people. This has corrupted our youth, sapped our economy, and fatally weakened our nation. Americans’ naivety, greed and disloyalty have made us fatally vulnerable to sabotage by foreign nations. We must look up from our Chinese-made gadgets—and down from Chinese-made surveillance craft—and see this sobering reality.

Until America abandons its Communist allies and returns to God’s law, the curses on this nation will continue!