The release of a report by the Defense Department Inspector General documenting the folly of President Biden’s Gaza pier is a sobering read. The 46th president announced the plan during a televised address to Congress in 2024, and 1,000 American troops were detailed to the quixotic task. The pier worked for some 20 days, and the bill came in for about $230 million. Now comes the shocking news that more than 60 people were injured in its building. 

Call it Mr. Biden’s folly, a pier to nowhere that doubles as a symbol for all the ways in which America’s intervention in Israel’s war against Hamas suffered from micromanagement paired with wishful thinking. The report lays out how Operation Neptune Solace, whose goal was to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans, was plagued by a medley of failures. These included training, organization, and neglect of “mission-specific” requirements.

The Pentagon had previously reckoned that three American troops suffered non-combat injuries in building the pier. Now, the report  says that number is closer to 62, though it adds: “Based on the information provided, we were not able to determine which of these 62 injuries occurred during the performance of duties or resulted off duty or from pre-existing medical conditions.” If the pier is responsible for even a fracture of those, it is a scandal. 

Most distressing of all is the death of an Army sergeant, Quandarius Stanley, who was injured in May 2024 aboard a Navy ship and who passed away some five months later. Treasure as well as blood were forfeited in the effort to build the pier. The dossier reports that more than two-dozen watercraft and other equipment was damaged, amounting to some $31 million in costs. The pier facilitated the delivery of 20 million pounds of food.

The pier was but the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Biden administration’s Gaza plan. There was the repeated insistence on the Rafah red line, which hamstrung the Israel Defense Forces for months — only for the Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, to be found amid the ruins of that city. Vice President Harris bragged that she had “studied the maps” and warned against operating at Rafah. Israel, though, evacuated civilians and completed its objectives.

An image in the report shows an Army vessel with gouges in the base and the words “total loss” spray-painted on its side. That about sums up the sad saga of the pier. Senator Wicker said it best when the benighted structure was still bobbing in the Mediterranean: “This irresponsible and expensive experiment defies all logic except the obvious political explanation: to appease the president’s far-left flank.”    

That appeasement prolonged the war and lined the pockets of Hamas, which confiscated the aid and charged Gazans exorbitant prices to access it. The thinking behind the pier was similarly Polyannish in respect of the difficulties of distributing aid in the Hamas enclave. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that what sunk the pier — and afflicted all of Mr. Biden’s Gaza policy — was his preoccupation with blaming Israel for the lack of aid at Gaza.