I would think that would be obvious to mature, competent, experienced and responsible policy-makers. But perhaps that’s not relevant here…
I awoke today to the news that the United States has air-dropped “humanitarian aid” into Gaza. Three US C-130s dropped 66 palettes of food, 22 from each aircraft. Biden complained last week about the slow pace of assistance flowing into Gaza, the Israeli campaign against which the United States is supporting with its funds. Wars against enemies are designed to make the populace under attack less well-off, eventually to the point where their government says “Enough!” and surrenders. Aid to a population under attack is intended to make the population under attack better off. Simultaneously funding an attack on a region and sending aid to that region isn’t ethical. It is offensively cynical, not merely refusing to make a decision, but making contradictory decisions to appeal to groups with diametrically opposing interests. Sending aid of any kind to the enemy of the nation we are supporting in a war can accomplish little more than extending that war. The most ethical way to engage in the unethical practice of warfare is to end it as quickly as possible.
I suppose you could call what the U.S is doing virtue-signaling, but are there really significant numbers of American so stupid and ethically addled that such an equivocal and irresponsible policy would appeal to them? That’s what the Biden administration must believe. So this is more vote buying.
I remember back when I worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is above all a lobbying organization, I was shocked to discover that a lot of the biggest corporate members would contribute large funds to opposing candidates in competitive races for the U.S. Senate. The objective, obviously, was to make sure that whoever won would think of the corporations favorably—a pure cognitive dissonance scale strategy. Those campaign contributions indicated nothing about the corporations’ beliefs or principles; it was just pragmatism. It even made sense in a weird realpolitik way.
What the U.S. is doing by simultaneously supporting a combatant in a war while helping the enemy of that combatant mitigate the effects of its war effort doesn’t make sense. It is repulsive. It reflects the deep lack of values and integrity in the current leadership of our country.
It is also a stupid and shallow policy that could only be looked on with favor by a stupid and shallow public.
Note: the WordPress AI bot wants me to tag this post “Ukraine.”
Ethics Alarms 
I’m absolutely positive that this had to be officially coordinated with Israel, and likely the nearest neighbor Egypt, to clear the airspace for the safety of the C-130’s. So knowing full well that there had to be official coordination for this drop I’m not going to condemn the Biden Administration for this drop until I get more information. It may be possible that Israel asked for help to get food to places where vehicle convoys effectively couldn’t reach but 38,000 meals is nothing when it’s been reported that there are likely hundreds of thousands of people that could be near starving.
I’m want more information about this drop from official Israel sources.
It is of course coordinated, but that is irrelevant. If the US insisted on dropping food, Isreal is not in a position to deny American planes safe access to Palestinian airspace. The power imbalance coerces Isreal into unwanted cooperation (which would never be publicly admitted by either party).
thisisrichinct wrote, “Israel is not in a position to deny American planes safe access to Palestinian airspace.”
Does Israel have to allow any country into the airspace just because they claim to be dropping aid?
If Iran says they are going to air drop humanitarian aid inside Gaza is there anything that Israel can do to stop it?
Is Israel in a position to deny other countries such clearance, let’s say a small regional Arab nation that wanted to air drop humanitarian aid in Gaza?
It’s a war zone, they most definitely can deny such safe passage.
Which only means that the US pressured them to allow it, not that Israel approves of the aid. The US could have pressured Great Britain into making Deutschland über Allesits national anthem in WWII to make Germans feel better while the Allies were bombing them too—but it wouldn’t mean Churchill liked the idea.
Do you think that the tiny nation of United Arab Emirates and that of France exerted so much political pressure that they too forced Israel to allow their air-drops of aid into Gaza?
I’m saying that air drops of aid in a modern day war zone requires some kind of cooperation at a high levels to assure that the aid aircraft are not attacked with anti-aircraft batteries and at this time we honestly do not know the whole story on how much open cooperation and/or political pressure was involved.
On the modern world political stage, it’s politically advantageous for Israel to allow, and maybe even ask others for, aid to be dropped to the general population of Gaza to, at the very least, try and prevent open starvation of the mass population while they destroy the militant Hamas terrorists.
I’m simply not willing to condemn the USA, or other countries, for air dropping aid into Gaza when I don’t know all the facts.
Reading this causes my mind to drift back to the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1991. President Bush and VP Quayle repeatedly reminded Americans that any conflict with Iraq “would not be another Vietnam.”
I’m not going to imply that humanitarian aid to Gaza creates “another Vietnam”, but it is – exactly as Jack wrote – giving aid to the enemy of an ally, giving that enemy comfort, potentially prolonging the conflict, and running up further debt. This is yet another vehicle by which US taxpayers are forced to – in this case, indirectly – financially support Hamas.
One wonders what the reactions of Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin would have been had B-24 Liberators commenced dropping humanitarian aid into Berlin in March and April of 1945.
Well the AI may have gotten this one half-right. I see the Israeli situation and the Ukrainian situation as almost the same thing. These are two wars that we are only making worse through our involvement. I mean, Russia never would have invaded Ukraine if we hadn’t overthrown the Ukrainian government, installed a puppet, started building NATO airbases near Russian border, and encouraged Zelensky to shell predominantly Russian towns. The war would have ended long ago if we hadn’t interfered in the peace treaty. Of course, blowing up Nordstream and the Germans blowing up the bridge in Crimea don’t help, either. We seem intent on getting the Ukrainians to fight to the bitter end while our investment banks buy up all the Ukrainian farmland and get the EU to make Ukranian grain exempt from duties and quality controls.
In the same way, we aren’t helping the Israelis with our interference, either. Our ‘Don’t hurt Hamas too badly’ demands are dragging this out and not helping the Israelis or Gazans. Airdropping food while US troops are killing Gazans in the tunnels is crazy.
So, tagging this ‘Ukraine’ is probably only 1/2 wrong.