Joe Biden's Ruinous War

People protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, March 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Joe Biden comes alive in such moments. As a comforter of the afflicted, he is a man of great decency and dignity. It’s a shame he’s abandoned those principles as they relate to the suffering of the Palestinians.

After promising aid, Biden and his cabinet recommended Israel against a large ground assault into Gaza. The Biden team pushed for a more surgical, intel-driven approach to drive down the risk of civilian casualties while dismantling Hamas battalions and targeting its leaders. Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant took the American money and proceeded with a massive ground offensive anyway.

Last week saw perhaps the most duplicitous photo op of the war yet. U.S. Central Command's public affairs team released images of American troops airdropping 38,000 meals – enough to provide a single meal for fewer than three percent of the Gazan population – into southern Gaza. Those meals were dropped on a city turned into a dystopian hellscape by bombs provided by the United States – through weapons sales for which President Biden bypassed the U.S. Congress.

In an attempt to mollify the growing majority of Americans who deplore Biden's support of Israel's brutal adjudication of the war, the president has lightly voiced displeasure with Netanyahu. Last month, he referred to a war that, by his secretary of defense's account, killed 25,000 women and children "over the top" without any further clarification. The American president decried Netanyahu's plan for a ground invasion into Rafah, the southern Gazan city to which IDF troops have directed more than a million Palestinians. An assault there would doubtless result in a humanitarian catastrophe unlike any thus far seen in the war. Brushing aside Biden's concerns, Netanyahu said he will do it anyway. Over the top, indeed.

All of this inability to influence Israel's conduct of the war while continuing to push aid to Tel Aviv makes Biden look foolish, weak, and ineffective. D.C.'s continued financial support for the war paints a portrait of Netanyahu leading Biden around by the nose in front of a global audience. Worse than this, however, is what all of this says about American values. America's abiding support to Israel over the past four months created the impression in the Middle East that for the United States, the suffering of a single Israeli is not worth that of a dozen Palestinians. The flow of aid leaves the impression that for the United States, the Palestinian people are not even considered "people" in the same sense as Israelis, Americans, or Europeans. How else to consider Biden's repeated and scathing criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for directing indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian women and children when American tax dollars are underwriting worse atrocities on Palestinians?

Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself. Netanyahu has a responsibility to his people to fight until Hamas can no longer constitute a threat. Moreover, even the most thoughtful, targeted, and strategic campaign would have killed civilians – such is the nature of fighting inside a densely packed enclave against an enemy that routinely uses women and children as shields.

Yet, there is no justification for what we're seeing in Gaza. None. Israeli supporters of the war's conduct, taking their cue from Netanyahu, repeatedly call out the Allied carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II as justification for the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. Considering all the advancements in intelligence, missile guidance systems, and targeting over the past seven and half decades, the parallel with World War II bombing does not hold up. Further, the internationally applied rules of law, established in the immediate aftermath of World War II, ensure that wars are no longer adjudicated with such inhumane lack of consideration for harm to civilians.

Another Netanyahu talking point parroted by Americans and Israelis supporting the appalling devastation in Gaza makes even less sense: the United States would react with even more force had such an attack – on the scale of 9/11 times 20 – occurred in America. Such a hypothetical is so fantastic that there is no way of knowing how we would react militarily. We can, however, hope that our leaders would not succumb to the worst animalistic urges of humanity. We can hope that as a nation, we will retain our values and dignity and, with them, our esteemed standing in the world.

That’s not the kind of leadership offered – in DC or Tel Aviv. And an accounting is coming. When the war is completely over, rebuilding Gaza will require an international coalition over many years and billions in reconstruction funds. However, there will be no way for the United States to repair its ruined standing in the Middle East.

COL Joe Buccino (U.S. Army, ret.) served as U.S. Central Command communications director from 2021 until 2023. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or any other organization.