In Israel's war on Hamas, an unfortunate incident occurred where a U.S.-based group delivering food aid saw its vehicle bombed and its occupants, including a U.S.-Canadian dual citizen, were killed.
Israel apologized, and called it the fog of war.
Joe Biden blew his easily blown top.
According to the New York Times:
In a sharply worded statement, Mr. Biden said that he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the deaths of the workers, who included a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. The seven workers, traveling in a convoy, were with World Central Kitchen, a charity that was helping to feed starving Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Mr. Biden noted that the deaths were not a “stand-alone incident,” and that the “conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.”
The president’s blunt criticism of an ally highlighted his growing impatience with Israel’s conduct of the war and increasing tensions with its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the death toll in Gaza has climbed, according to Gazan health authorities, past 32,000.
Which is nonsense. Aid workers have been killed in war zones for as long as war has existed, and many of the so-called aid workers in this conflict have been actual members of Hamas. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA, was famous for having at least 12 staff members on the terrorist team who actually participated in the October 7 terror attacks on Israel. Hundreds more cheered on internet bulletin boards, and Israel says there are more than just this dirty dozen.
Just because someone is billed an 'aid worker' doesn't mean that delivering aid is the only thing they're doing.
But let's say that this group had no Hamas sympathies and just wanted to deliver aid to what they believed were non-Hamas supporters in Gaza.
Joe Biden is the last person who should be pointing a finger at Israel for civilian deaths.
Does Biden think anyone has forgotten what happened in the wake of his disastrous Afghanistan pullout, when, in a failed retaliation for the suicide bombings that killed 13 U.S. service members, he blew up a vehicle full of seven children and three others?
According to the New York Times, in a report dated Jan. 19, 2022:
WASHINGTON — Newly declassified surveillance footage provides additional insights about the final minutes and aftermath of a botched U.S. drone strike last year in Kabul, Afghanistan, showing how the military made a life-or-death decision based on imagery that was fuzzy, hard to interpret in real time and prone to confirmation bias.
The strike on Aug. 29 killed 10 innocent people — including seven children — in a tragic blunder that punctuated the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The disclosure of the videos was a rare step by the U.S. military in any case of an airstrike that caused civilian casualties, and is the first time any footage from the Kabul strike has been seen publicly. The videos encompass about 25 minutes of silent footage from two drones — a military official said both were MQ-9 Reapers — showing the minutes before, during and after the strike.
That's ten innocent people who didn't need to die, and based on reports since, were good and decent family people with no ties to terrorists.
The Times report highlighted the risks of military operations "under extreme pressure" in a "densely populated neighborhood," in its report, which sounds a lot like Gaza and the conditions encountered there by the Israel Defense Forces.
Instead of give our ally the benefit of the doubt, Biden goes and points the finger, as if the U.S. couldn't possibly make such a mistake in the fog of war with terrorists shooting.
Fact is, the U.S. with its permawars has killed thousands of civilians and even some aid workers, too. Remember her?
When a combatant group is using aid workers and everyone else as human shields in order to carry out terrorism, it's inevitable that there will be civilian deaths. Reporters, medical personnel, relief workers, and NGO personnel have not been exempt.
The U.S. is responsible for large numbers of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, as the New Yorker described here, and it appears Israel has, too.
A little humility here from Biden would work better than this disingenuous finger-pointing, given that the U.S. has made unintentional mistakes in the fog of war, too.
That Biden can be such a flaming hot hypocrite in this instance is obviously a bid to shore up his pro-Hamas voting base as he seeks re-election.
It's just sad that we as Americans are being dragged along for his sanctimonious ride.
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