It sounded ill-conceived the moment President Joe Biden said it.
“Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters,” Biden said during his State of the Union address.
“No U.S. boots will be on the ground,” Biden promised. “This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”
Getting food to starving Gazans is a worthy goal, but how is the U.S. military going to build a pier in a war zone without putting any U.S. troops there? Who is going to provide security in a war zone? Who is going to prevent Hamas terrorists from blowing it up? Who is going to take the food off the boats? Who is going to deliver the food into Gaza? Who is going to prevent Hamas terrorists from stealing the food and starving Gazans as they are already doing?
Biden provided none of these details in his speech, and it is now clear that is because Biden didn’t have any answers to the questions above.
Apparently, just this week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reached an agreement with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the Israel Defense Forces provide a “security bubble” that would “protect the U.S. personnel building the pier as well as the individuals involved in offloading and distributing the aid.”
These all seem like important details that should have been nailed down before Biden announced the project, but they still leave other questions unanswered, such as who is going to be loading the food off the pier, driving it into Gaza, and then distributing it? We still don’t know.
Even what we have been told is still sketchy. The same report says that “U.S. officials have said Israel will play a role in securing the pier, but have not specified what that role would be.”
So, is the IDF responsible for protecting U.S. troops as they build and maintain the pier or not? Or will they share that duty with the U.S. or another entity entirely? All of this appears to be not settled yet.
If Biden had a stronger track record prioritizing the lives of American troops over his own narrow political interests, these unanswered questions might not be so alarming. But this is the same administration that ignored multiple warnings from Pentagon officials that its plan to abandon Afghanistan was naive and would place American lives at risk.
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Biden went ahead with his plans for purely political reasons, and, as a direct result of his incompetence and hubris, 13 service members died.
Let’s all pray Biden’s arrogant ineptitude doesn’t get more Americans killed.