Editors at National Review Online assess one of President Biden’s State of the Union promises.
President Biden’s $320 million project to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, announced during his State of the Union address as an innovative way to deliver more humanitarian aid to Palestinians, is out of service just two weeks after opening.
The T-shaped floating structure, which contains a large platform that allows boats to unload aid off the coast, and then a narrow strip for moving the food and supplies from the platform to shore, broke apart during a storm in the Mediterranean Sea. Four boats that had been used to take supplies from the platform to the shore got tossed about and ran aground.
Two boats had drifted off and gotten stuck on the Israeli side of the border, with two more getting beached near the pier.
But that’s not all.
Last week, while the pier was still operational, Pentagon spokesman Major General Patrick Ryder said that it had enabled 569 metric tons of humanitarian assistance to get to the beaches of Gaza. But — key point — just because aid makes its way into Gaza, it doesn’t mean that it made it to the intended recipients. It turns out that the aid was looted once NGOs tried to distribute it. When asked whether any aid had actually made it to the Palestinians in need, Ryder admitted, “I do not believe so.”
Construction of the pier also resulted in noncombat injuries to three American service members (one was critically injured).
It would be one thing if these occurrences were unpredictable — i.e., merely bad luck. The damage to the pier and inability to get aid to those in need, however, were among the likely outcomes when Biden gave the order for the military to build the pier in a desperate effort to quell the “Genocide Joe” chants.
