The US-built pier in Gaza broke apart. Here's how we got here and what might be next
The US-built pier in Gaza broke apart. Here's how we got here and what might be next
A string of security, logistical and weather problems has battered the plan to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza through a U.S. military-built pier.
Intentional waste of time and money. Complicity at its most craven. It's unforgivable.
A coalition of countries needs to drive aid trucks with armed escort into Gaza. Dare Israel to fucking kill some of their "allies" soldiers instead of shooting children and women who are running away or sleeping.
They wouldn't need this pier if, you know, we stopped funding Israel to continue this genocide.
But Biden will literally never do that...
He's spent 50 years saying he would never hold them accountable for anything if it means even slowing aid down.
Hell, when Obama was prez and Biden was just the VP. biden publicly shit talked Obama when he threatened to cut aid to Israel due to their human rights abuses.
Biden made a big deal about how the only thing that works with Israel is giving them everything they want and holding them accountable would backfire.
Obama was smart enough to not listen, and Israel toned it down.
Joe learned absolutely nothing from that. Or worse, has always known it's bullshit and still does.
I really thought in 2020 I was done playing "is the president honestly this stupid or lying?"
But it looks like we'll keep playing till 2028 at least
We wasted months not giving them aid to build this pier...
It cost 320 million dollars, and lasted a fucking week.
And Palestinians are still starving to death.
I legitimately don't know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional.
With the shit Biden openly says, it's hard to believe there's not worse shit he's managing not to say. If not, isn't saying whatever horrible pro genocide shit that pops into your head one of the reasons trump is bad?
trump is obviously worse, but running a campaign on that makes a genocide ok won't get a Dem in office.
I legitimately don’t know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional.
If the purpose was to bring aid to the Palestinians, they'd just open the border crossing.
Rather, everything we see is consistent trying to create the appearance of doing something to help, but making sure you don't actually affect the famine.
everything we see is consistent trying to create the appearance of doing something to help, but making sure you don’t
That's the most we get these days. With pretty much any topic.
At most we get some breadcrumbs for optics right before elections, but never any real work towards real solutions.
It's why not paying attention and just voting "blue no matter who" should never be a plan except for one election in a blue moon where something crazy just happened.
This is Trump's 3rd election now, if the DNC can't find a good candidate that can beat Trump and give Dem voters what we want, then we need new people running the DNC.
If the DNC won't change, we need a whole ass new party.
Going along with this bullshit isn't helping anyone.
The absence of evil isn't good. It's just the absence of evil.
We need politicians actually willing to do good things. Hell, it's not even "absence of evil" the good guys are funding genocides these days.
It's just "slightly less evil".
Congress voted in favor of munitions aid. The State Department reported inconclusive evidence of war crime. It would be unprecedented for Biden to alter existing contracts without support from one of these branches, and would likely be challenged in the Judiciary Branch in the form of an impeachment hearing for bad faith or personal agenda.
We pay tens of trillions of dollars annually for the most informed State Department in the world. POTUS doesn’t decide based on information outside of our own intelligence, not news, the UN, the ICC, or the ICJ. Biden needs to pressure Blinken for a more thorough investigation, including the most recent “accidents” in civilian occupied areas, to provide a concrete platform for amendment or withdrawal of support.
TL;DR: POTUS doesn’t make decisions on international affairs based on polls.
I legitimately don't know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional
It was either that or colossally incompetent.
Given that it had to go through several rounds of approval before being announced and every independent expert pointed out that it would be much less effective in itself than delivering aid by truck while doing nothing to keep the IDF from controlling it, that's highly unlikely, though.
It's a very transparent PR stunt that they almost certainly knew wouldn't make a dent in the deliberately induced starvation.
The money wasn't wasted, it went directly where it was intended for. The pockets of multi billionaire defense contractors.
When I said "why the fuck didn't 'oceans could be rough' come up as a possibility to them" yesterday, I got a bunch of people defending the U.S. military over this.
I'm curious if the defenders will come back into this thread.
Edit: It's been 10 hours, so I'm guessing the answer is no.
The US military should know this. They should be able to build piers like this while under active fire. This is one of the things we need for a world war style invasion (think WWII d-day)
Fell apart or was sabotaged?
I would think they work fine everywhere else and defended vigorously. This story sounds like a half truth.
We need more transparency about why it failed.
Yeah man, I was in the Navy on a LHD, shit comes with helicopters and even an amphibious landing craft, and the US pretty much always has one in the area.
There was never a single need for the dock, it was always a stalling tactic.
Like, there is just no valid reason the US ever needs a fucking dock to get equipment/supplies onto the shore.
For fucks sake, we were "air dropping" aid out of airplanes from bomb height like care packages in Call of Duty....
We could have been sitting it down directly into a controlled forward operating base and letting the aid be distributed like civilized people instead of whoever shows up with weapons first gets all of it.
Nothing about any of this has made sense if Biden actually wanted to help and not just make it look like he was helping.
The US military is not this incompetent
The dock was always about being seen to help resolve the humanitarian crisis, but not actually get anyone linked to US policy inanywayshapeorform involved directly on the ground in Gaza.
Like others have said, if the US/Egypt/Arab nations actually wanted to solve the famine? Aid convoy with military escort. “We’re gonna help these people, try and stop us” and let the IDF fafo. Hamas may not play along, but they have and are coordinating with aid agencies all the time for convoys.