The U.S. military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters, when asked about the costs.
Israel has been making military targets of aid distribution through land routes. If that were an effective method then there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands if not millions of starving Palestinians, and then we wouldn’t need to send the naval vessels.
Your comment reeks of ignorance of the state of the world.
There is a simple method of solving that problem, just have US military vehicles in the convoys with orders to return fire at everything shooting at them.
How is mobilizing US Military land vehicles across the middle east any logistically different than sending 10 naval vessels? If anything that would be more costly. Plus, they’ll just get caught up at the checkpoints set up by Israeli military the same as the other convoys. Because, generally, starting gunfights is frowned upon, so instead they fall back on beaurocracy.
Time. The US military prides itself on being able to mobilize worldwide in hours. So instead of taking months to construct a dock, which the starving people of Gaza don’t have, they could take hours to get some people there.
Nobody is arguing money here, if anything, less money into the region, specifically Israel, would be nice. Time is the elephant in the room.
Not if they have orders not to stop, and US diplomatic channels hammer that home before they get there. If the US used actual pressure, Israel would fold like a house of cards, just as they did last time.
Even the bureaucracy would be enough. The US could tell Israel that they won’t get a penny if they continue this course of action any day, and Israel would back down, as they did before. They don’t so they don’t.
The US is doing worse than fuck-all, it’s actively trying to put all its diplomatic power into running cover for Israel’s genocide, and Israel is humiliating the US in turn, while taking their money. Moreover, the whole thing could influence the US elections in a way that would result in a US dictatorship. It’s mind-bogglingly insane.
Lmao, land convoys are NOT faster than the Navy for supplying food and water. I can’t even begin to understand your position if you think something so silly.
Skipping the bureaucracy is better than dealing with the bureaucracy. The fact that your message is inconsistent by saying the naval ships aren’t enough, but instead intentionally getting stalled at the border would be enough, seems ridiculous.
I’m aware of that. What I’m not aware of is how a pier helps. Israel has not conducted strikes in Egypt, or in Israel, so Israeli strikes are not a reason to have aid avoid either of those countries. The Israeli strikes have hit aid groups traveling within Gaza. It doesn’t matter if aid gets to gaza at a land border, or an sea border. It still needs to be transported within Gaza, so it still has all of the same problems.
If Israel makes military targets of the US Navy then that’s going to be real “fuck around and find out” territory. Helping from afar was inadequate, so now we’re going to be helping in person.