ANALYSIS – The buck stops with Biden. As predicted, Joe Biden's idiotic, hyper-costly, humanitarian pier in Gaza, has become a monumental disaster. Biden should never have attempted to set up a floating pier to deliver aid in the midst of a major conflict by one of our staunchest allies, in turbulent seas.
But he did.
Why? Because some leftist radicals on college campuses were calling him “Genocide Joe.”
And it now has all the hallmarks of a classic Biden operation. A total cock-up.
The question is who made the ultimate decision to go forward with this boondoggle. Someone needs to be fired, or impeached.
This week, after considerable delays due to ship problems and weather, as well as cost overruns – the cost doubled to $320 million from his initial claims – the pier finally started delivering aid a few days ago, except it really didn't.
Very little was actually delivered since much of what did get dropped off was quickly seized by mobs and terrorists.
On May 18, 11 trucks were intercepted by Gazans mobs, and only five made it to the World Food Program (WFP) warehouse, causing the operation to be temporarily halted again.
“Crowds had stopped the trucks at various points along the way. There was … what I think I would refer to as self-distribution,” a U.N. spokesman told reporters. Note, that's U.N.-speak for mobs stealing supplies.
But that's not all. After promising that this boondoggle would not require any American boots on the ground, three U.S. service members, all wearing boots I presume, were injured on the ground working on the pier, one of them seriously. (RELATED: Biden's Gaza Pier Operation Claims First US Casualties)
The pier construction site also came under mortar attack earlier, and now the pier just broke. Actually, it fell apart. This, after rough seas caused three or four of the motorized sections to run aground on the Gaza beach. So, all in all the pier lasted all of 12 days.
As Newsweek reported:
U.S. forces are now in the process of removing the pier from its anchored position on the coast to begin repairs. The little humanitarian aid that had been delivered through the dock will be put on hold while those repairs are made.
The Biden administration spent approximately $320 million constructing the temporary pier, known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS), which was operational for only a week before first sustaining damage. Strategically located just southwest of Gaza City, once Gaza's most heavily populated areas, the port was intended to be a crucial entry point for aid, even as aid groups stress it isn't meant to replace land crossings that remain blocked…
But the project was marred from the start. Officials cited several challenges, from logistical issues with transferring aid from ships to trucks, to security threats from potential militant attacks, to crowds looting trucks from the port and a shortage of fuel for the trucks….
On Wednesday, May 28, U.S. forces began removing the pier from its anchored position on the coast and will tow it back to the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod to begin repairs. This could take more than a week.
Sabrina Singh, Deputy Pentagon press secretary, had the unfortunate duty of announcing that Biden's much-touted effort to help the Palestinians had broken.
According to her statement, “we had a perfect storm of high seas states, and then, as I mentioned, this North African weather system also came in at the same time, creating not an optimal environment to operate this JLOTS – this temporary pier.”
However, National Review noted:
But it did not require a “perfect storm” to break apart the pier. CNN reported May 9: “It can only be safely operated in conditions with a maximum of 3-foot waves and winds less than approximately 15 miles per hour, according to a 2006 Naval War College paper on the systems limitations.” [And] Three-foot waves appear regularly on the Gaza coastline.
So, everyone knew this was going to fail. And it has.
National Review continues:
Our Phil Klein fumes, “The Gaza pier is every bit the disaster we all expected it would be when Biden made the ridiculous proposal in his State of the Union address back in March. . . . This debacle was not only predictable, it was predicted by many.”
Now, the Pentagon's JLOTS guys aren't stupid. They knew the likelihood that weather conditions would require operations to halt at least temporarily, and the potential risk to equipment and personnel. This is why you're seeing speculation that the Pentagon prioritized the president's orders over a reasonable assessment of the risk.
We don't know who, precisely, came up with the idea to build a pier. Perhaps on some future date, we'll hear that it was the proposal of national-security adviser Jake Sullivan or Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or someone else. The buck stops with the president, anyway; he's the one who authorized the mission.
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