Utopian intentions. Naive assumptions. Petty political point scoring. Inept planning. Disastrous outcomes. Those are the hallmarks of every foreign policy decision President Joe Biden has made since taking office, and they are all on full display with the absurd failure of his pier for the landing of aid to Gaza.
Two months and $320 million after he first announced the project during his State of the Union address, the U.S. Navy delivered the first 16 trucks of aid to Gaza on Saturday, carrying 569 tons of food and other humanitarian items.
Eleven of the trucks were robbed of their entire payloads before they reached their destination. None of the food that made it through to its warehouse destination has since been successfully distributed.
Video of the trucks driving in Gaza shows Palestinians jumping aboard the moving vehicles, ripping aid away, and throwing it to others waiting to catch it. Eventually, the whole convoy was swarmed and forced to stop, and its aid was looted. One Gazan was shot and killed in the chaos.
Asked if any of the aid delivered via Biden’s pier had yet reached its proper destination in Gaza, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder admitted this week, “As of today, I do not believe so.”
Getting food to starving people is a worthy goal. But getting aid to Gaza has not been a genuine problem, much though Israel has been unjustly excoriated for failing to deliver it. Gazans are not starving because Israel is stopping aid from reaching them, but because Hamas wants them to starve for propaganda purposes, and the terrorist group controls the gangs that have been stealing aid and selling it on the black market. Until Hamas is defeated, feeding the people of Gaza will be difficult. It’s another reason Hamas should be destroyed.
Despite Biden’s protestations otherwise, his administration has deliberately prolonged Hamas’s grip on Gaza, frustrating and delaying Israeli efforts to do what must be done.
The result is a bloody quagmire that divides Biden’s political base in an election year, hence the impromptu announcement of the pier during his State of the Union speech. It did not end any suffering in Gaza, but it did prop up Biden’s poll numbers, thus temporarily tamping down talk of him being replaced at the Democratic National Convention.
The parallels to Biden’s Afghanistan debacle are striking. There, Biden wanted to remove U.S. troops from danger and bring an end to civil war. But the plans were politically driven by the 9/11 anniversary. Top generals told the president his plan would lead to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and put U.S. lives in danger at the hands of the Taliban. Biden ignored the warnings and pressed ahead. Thirteen U.S. troops paid for Biden’s ego with their lives, and countless other Afghan civilians died as the Taliban swept to power as predicted by everyone other than Biden, who, characteristically, had denied the possibility.
The world saw Biden’s arrogant weakness and took note. Russian President Vladimir Putin, noting Biden’s eager retreat, saw American weakness and invaded Ukraine.
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Tehran also noticed Biden’s spinelessness in weakening sanctions on Iran and trying to revive President Barack Obama’s failed nuclear deal. Free to sell oil as it had not been under President Donald Trump, Tehran used petrodollars to fund proxy militants throughout the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza. Without Tehran’s funding, training, and permission, Hamas would never have attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Asked to assess Biden’s pier operation, former U.S. Agency for International Development official and current Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk called it “political theater.” We hope Biden will bring down the curtain before American soldiers get hurt.