(LibertySons.org) – President Joe Biden announced he was directing the military to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea. The project has been an expensive nightmare, and now the administration plans to remove it sooner than planned.
The US spent $230 million on the pier so ships carrying humanitarian aid could dock and offload in Gaza. As of mid-June, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced about 3,500 tons of aid to the Palestinian people. However, the pier has been out of service more than it has been in service.
The pier is part of the Pentagon’s Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS) capability. It began operating on May 17 but has faced multiple setbacks. The pier broke apart in rough seas that same month, forcing the military to take it out of service and repair it.
On June 8, the Pentagon re-anchored the pier in the Mediterranean. The next day, the World Food Program (WFP) announced it stopped aid distribution from the pier because of concerns about safety after two of its warehouses were hit by rockets. On June 14, CENTCOM said the pier would be moved to Israel because of bad weather. The structure was eventually moved back, but reports indicated that the military was going to stop using it as early as July.
Originally, the pier was going to be operational until September, when the seas started getting rougher.
The Cato Institute’s Justin Logan criticized the administration, saying they “can’t shoot straight.” He said Biden’s team continues to have a “‘ready, fire and then aim’ approach to this kind of stuff.” Logan, who serves as Cato’s director of defense and foreign policy, said the administration’s Middle East policy has “a lack of strategic coherence.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) issued a press release in early June vocalizing what many Republicans had complained about. He called the pier an “irresponsible and expensive experiment [that] defies all logic.”
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