Mockery and hard questions are pouring in over the White House’s decision to build a so-called “humanitarian pier” to “deliver aid to Gaza” that has since failed, spectacularly.  

The March announcement of the pier perplexed establishment aid organizations—Doctors Without Borders called it a “glaring distraction”—because the idea of a military circumventing a blockade that its own government is funding, arming, and militarily supporting seemed both unprecedented and absurd on its face. The $320 million pier was finished a few weeks ago, only to deliver virtually no aid then unceremoniously fall into the sea due to severe weather last week. 

While the nominal failure of this project has, of course, received some criticism in US media, this criticism is small compared to the initial torrent of glowing headlines that accompanied the announcement that painted the Biden administration as a bold humanitarian force coming to the aid of Gazans in crisis. Using this metric of public relations and general media vibes, the pier was a stirring success and, all things considered, a fairly cheap and easy way to generate some positive coverage for the White House that risked—and remains at risk of—being too closely associated with a “war” that 56% of Democrats believe to be a “genocide.” 

The $320 million pier was finished a few weeks ago, only to deliver virtually no aid then unceremoniously fall into the sea due to severe weather last week.

As I’ve written before, the White House’s Gaza policy is best understood, first and foremost, as a PR strategy. The US’s underlying military and diplomatic support for Israel’s unrelenting violence and mass displacement campaign is unwavering. When it comes to material things that exist in material reality—weapons shipments, military hardware, intelligence support, vetoing ceasefire resolutions at the UN—the US has been 100% behind its closest Middle East ally. But, given the non-stop images of charred kids and crying, displaced mothers flooding people’s social media timelines, and increasingly making their way into mainstream media, the White House knows it needs to manage popular perception of its support for Israel. 

The strategy it’s taken is that of Mitigating, Humanitarian Inside Man. The basic narrative is that Israel is an otherwise maximally violent rogue nation and the US, by arming and backing them, somehow earns sway over Israel and thus mitigates their naturally violent tendencies for humanitarian purposes. It’s a pleasing fiction because it allows American liberals to paint supplying bombs, logistics, and diplomatic cover for what Human Rights Watch founder Aryeh Neier recently labeled a “genocide” not as support for war crimes, but an act of social justice intervention in service of Palestinians.

Palestinians, of course, don’t see it that way, and find the White House’s ad hoc moral worldbuilding, propped up by New York Times-types, as convoluted, nonsensical, and deeply perverse: Framing genocide support as a humanitarian gesture stretches the limits of credulity and cynicism to the point of spaghettification. 

Using this metric of public relations and general media vibes, the pier was a stirring success and, all things considered, a fairly cheap and easy way to generate some positive coverage for the White House that risked—and remains at risk of—being too closely associated with a “war” that 56% of Democrats believe to be a “genocide.”

It’s in this context that we must understand the “humanitarian pier” stunt was an unmitigated success. The point was to paint a general picture for low-information and half-paying-attention liberal and independent voters that the US is not only not a participant in genocide, but is, in fact, helping counter the genocide. Like with the rebranding of the term “ceasefire” the week of the Michigan primary and its attendant Uncommitted campaign, or the cruelly inefficient air drops that ended up killing several Palestinians, or the posturing about “red lines” for invading Rafah that evaporated overnight, or the constant White House-curated leaked stories of Biden’s alleged “anger” and “tension” with Netanyahu, the point is to distance the White House from the visible carnage it is facilitating. Anything that muddies these waters, that convinces a sufficient number of voters that Biden is a third-party humanitarian force simply spectating and nudging from the sidelines—rather than the primary patron of the death they see on their screens—has served its fundamental purpose. For weeks, the average American media consumer was flooded with heroic headlines and chyrons of Biden coming to the aid of Palestinians. Here is just a small sampling:

As images of starving children flooded social media and traditional media, the White House had to look like it was doing something, anything, to stem the suffering. The most obvious solution—to simply force Israel to open up aid routes and agree to a ceasefire by withholding military support—was simply never an option, though actual aid organizations and experts argued for it at the time. Absent a real political solution, the White House was going to engage in another half-assed stunt, motivated by perception management, not solving the actual crisis at hand.

Absent a real political solution, the White House was going to engage in another half-assed stunt, motivated by perception management, not solving the actual crisis at hand.

Those watching these PR gestures fall flat are understandably confused by how weak and incompetent they make the United States and the White House look. Watching Israel cross Biden’s red lines with murderous abandon, blockade the US’s nominal aid, and ignore these alleged warnings to “better protect civilians” is a constant source of very public humiliation. After Israel rammed tanks right through the White House’s alleged Rafah “red line” last month, The Nation’s Jeet Heer tweeted, “Looks like Biden got outfoxed by Netanyahu once again. This makes Biden look weak and feckless.”

While this is true, it misses the point, and it’s important that this be clear: The White House doesn’t care. Weakness, helplessness—powerlessness, but with good intentions—is the Democrats’ entire brand. The White House and top liberals in their orbit decided long ago that they’d much rather look bumbling than like they are the primary sponsor of the mass killing in Gaza. 

Far more central to their brand and self-identity is the idea of “liberal rules-based order” pablum. Biden, Blinken, and Democratic leaders would much rather see themselves—and, more importantly, have others see them—as feckless, failed humanitarians than as evil. Stumbling Empire has served them well thus far; there’s no reason to change course now. A key element of neoliberal political formations is the avoidance of ideological discussion. Neoliberalism, in practice, is deeply ideological, of course. But one must never cop to this, lest one have to stand for anything, and thus be accountable. The posture of perpetual powerlessness helps avoid this problem altogether. It helps avoid accountability altogether, it helps avoid discussing the substance of their backing of a genocide altogether. 

Weakness, helplessness—powerlessness, but with good intentions—is the Democrats’ entire brand. The White House and top liberals in their orbit decided long ago that they’d much rather look bumbling than like they are the primary sponsor of the mass killing in Gaza.

So what we have is a series of PR stunts designed to get good press and confuse just enough voters—stunts that enable Biden to, at a minimum, sufficiently distance himself from the horrors unfolding in Gaza and, ideally, to brand himself as a friend of the Palestinians working hard to protect them from the hot-headed and vengeful Israelis. Using this deeply cynical—but, at this point, obvious—criteria, the “humanitarian pier” wasn’t a failure at all. It was a pretty effective marketing spectacle in service of the Biden administration’s larger strategy of whitewashing its role in facilitating mass death in Gaza.  

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Adam Johnson hosts the Citations Needed podcast and writes at The Column on Substack. Follow him @adamjohnsonCHI.