Has our country been overwhelmed by drone hysteria? You know the drone controversy currently occurring on the East Coast is getting out of hand when a Republican congressman claims the nighttime flying objects are coming from an Iranian mothership floating somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government has done little to deliver any substantial proof these night flying drones are indeed harmless, or at least the product of a reasonable explanation. Critics from both parties complain the Biden administration’s efforts to calm the public have been unsatisfactory. Then again, based on recent history, maybe his approach is the best a lame duck president can offer.
The sighting of mysterious drones in the New York and New Jersey skies is a wacky story that serves as a fitting coda to an extremely wacky election year. After all, this was a year that saw an incumbent stumble mightily in a debate, a ruthless Democrat party boss named George Clooney force the struggling incumbent to drop out of the race, the election reins subsequently turned over to a vice-president who few had seen in the previous three and a half years, and her defeat by a candidate who convinced voters he possessed the magical powers to lower the price of eggs.
On the other hand, the magical powers exercised by celebrities Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Oprah could not help Kamala Harris do battle with Donald Trump, not even in the so-called battleground states, the election results of which at least served the purpose of magically restoring the winning candidate’s faith in the credibility of our country’s voting system.
President Biden has displayed little interest in worrying about these drones and any threat they may pose to national security. In addressing the drone crisis, government officials have articulated the kind of Biden administration response frequently observed during the past four years when dealing with difficult issues like a retreat from Afghanistan, the stubborn presence of inflation, and the influx of illegal immigrants at the border. This response basically amounts to “Don’t worry. Nothing to see here. Just move along.”
With his presidential tenure coming to a swift end, however, don’t expect to see any significant action from a post-election Joe Biden too tired, too bitter, and too fed up to bother with such a trivial matter like mysterious moving lights hovering over heavily populated areas of the country. Nevertheless, reflecting on Biden’s blasé approach has lead me to wonder about how other presidential administrations from the recent past might have responded to similar drone sightings, and whether such actions would be preferred to what is occurring (or not occurring) today.
For example, I imagined President George W. Bush dealing with nightly drone visitations along the East Coast and came to the unpleasant conclusion that such an affront to our national security would be met with a costly invasion of Iraq. That led me to think Biden’s current inaction might not be a bad thing after all.
Next, I envisioned President Obama facing down the drones, only to struggle with the notion that these drones would ever take seriously his attempt to establish a “red line” that should not be crossed. Once the first red line was flown across, Obama would likely establish another one, and then another one, while “exploring other options.” After a few months, drones would be threatening to cross the latest red line located somewhere near the Mississippi River.
I then thought of how the first Trump administration might have dealt with these drones. I’m not sure how this would have remedied the situation, but China and Dr. Anthony Fauci would in all likelihood be assigned most of the blame for these nighttime incursions.
So it seems that Biden’s tepid reaction to the drone flyovers might not be so bad after all, at least as seen from a historical perspective. But what about the future? Can we expect better?
How will Trump 2.0 react? So far, the President-elect has been somewhat less than bold in his rhetoric and actions, commenting tentatively that “Something strange is going on. For some reason they don’t want to tell the people,” while at the same time deciding to cancel a planned weekend trip to his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. I half-expected Trump — emboldened by his election victory — to further impress his supporters by personally taking up arms against these space invaders, but based on his decision to avoid time living dangerously in New Jersey we can assume his bone spurs have started acting up once again.
After Inauguration Day, can we expect him to be more decisive, or maybe just divisive? Only time will tell. Hopefully, he will temporarily set aside problems in Ukraine, Syria, the Taiwan Strait, and Gaza to focus once and for all on these drones. I can just hear him at his State of the Union speech mobilizing popular support:
”I never liked them. I hear they are eating our pets. We need a wall to keep them out. Or maybe we deport them. This is an invasion. Whoever is sending them…they are not sending us their best drones. I hear many of these drones were released from foreign jails. Many of them fly here to collect Social Security and welfare benefits.”
On second thought, who needs Biden’s lack of inaction? Maybe we should all look forward to Trump’s decisive action. Or do I mean divisive action? Whatever works, his supporters will say. Just be prepared for some liberal woke heartache, because if drone deportation actually takes place, we can expect many of the drones to be separated at the border from that reputed mother ship located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and that will make for some really bad anti-family optics.
Steve Rodriguez is a retired Marine Corps officer and high school teacher who last taught at Olympian High School in Chula Vista.
