“I think sometimes there’s an expectation of the US military — because they’re so good — that everything they touch is just going to turn to gold in an instant.”

So said national security spokesman John Kirby in remarks to reporters mid-week.

I’m not sure where John’s getting his information, but in fact, many in the international community have the opposite expectation of the US military. That is, they assume everything the US military touches is just going to turn to sh–t — in an instant.

To the extent the US military’s standing abroad is in disrepair, it’s a reputational problem of America’s own making. Blame jingoistic adventurism, hubristic interventions, neocolonialism and a war on terror that killed far more people than it saved. The Biden administration’s schizophrenic approach to the war in Gaza is just the latest in a long string of boondoggles dating back roughly six decades.

The problem in Gaza can be encapsulated in just a few words. Gazans find fragments of US munitions when they’re collecting the severed limbs (and heads) of their loved ones from bomb craters. If you’re a Gazan, that’s a bit hard to square with the Biden administration’s pretensions to protecting civilians from bombs. Equally incongruous is the juxtaposition between the administration’s complicity in an engineered famine and slapdash, piecemeal efforts to deliver food and water.

Rather than issue to Benjamin Netanyahu an ultimatum regarding aid convoys into Gaza, the US decided instead to air drop food into the enclave and, later, to spend $320 million on a makeshift pier, which the Pentagon optimistically estimated could facilitate the delivery of 150 truckloads of aid per day.

After a series of delays, the pier became operational earlier this month. Spoiler alert: Things went off the rails pretty much immediately, culminating this week in the suspension of aid deliveries “after a section broke free and floated away,” as The Washington Post put it. The Pentagon blamed strong winds and heavy seas. (Who knew?!)

This would be comedic under less tragic circumstances. The US’s refusal to make binding demands on Israel resulted in a multi-faceted humanitarian crisis, and rather than simply instruct Netanyahu to ensure the safe delivery of food and water, the White House spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a LEGO project.

The saving grace is that expectations for the pier weren’t high. Indeed, the only people on Earth dense enough to think this would work were the good folks at the Pentagon. You don’t need to be Albert Einstein to dub this endeavor doltish, but just in case, the Albert Einstein-founded International Rescue Committee called the project “a side-show.” “Sh-t-show.” Sh-t-show is probably better.

If you’re wondering whether, in light of the inauspicious grand opening, the US might consider abandoning the pier idea, or at least complimenting it by making binding demands on the Netanyahu government, the answer’s “no.” Instead, the US will — and this is real — pull the pier off the beach in pieces, drag it to Ashdod, put it back together, drag it back down into Gaza and reattach it. Presumably while starving Gazans look on, bemused, from the shore.

“From when it was operational, it was working,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh mused, fondly. “Hopefully,” she went on, the structure “should be back up and running” in “just a little over a week.”

Kirby, in the same series of Wednesday remarks cited here at the outset, defended the project. “Why wouldn’t we try this?” he wondered.

Believe it or not, this is the same organization that successfully stormed Normandy.