Biden's "Red Line"

Is language the real weapon?

A lot has been said about President Joe Biden’s statement in an interview with CNN on May 8, when he said:

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”

And indeed there is a lot to say about it. A quick review of search results on the quote shows that the great majority of reports on Biden’s statement and the interview during which it was made interpret it as being the first time Biden has actually stated publicly that he would withhold weapons from Israel if they launch an assault on Rafah. Several news sites remark that the statement reveals a clear rift in relations between the USA and Israel, and more than one mentions a “red line.” The site The Hill says that Biden was “laying down a clear line.” AP called it “his toughest statement yet.”

But if one examines the statement closely, it is not at all clear. One might even go so far as to see it as incoherent. And the question of whether it really constitutes a “red line” remains open.

To begin with, whereas the interviewer, CNN's Erin Burnett, says matter-of-factly in her question to Biden that “Israel is striking Rafah,” – the assault had already begun on May 7, whereas the interview was conducted on the 8th – Biden attempts to deny that by saying “if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah...” Biden is already creating a kind of hypothetical space in which observable facts do not play the leading role.

Then, in describing the weapons he says he will withhold from Israel, he says that they “have been used historically to deal with Rafah.” Already by saying that they have been used “historically” (let us be clear where Biden was not: we are talking about 2,000-lb. gravity or “dumb” bombs, otherwise known as “blockbusters” or “bunker busters”), Biden has made an admission: From the beginning, Israel has claimed that its purpose in attacking Gaza is to eliminate Hamas, and that its air strikes precisely target Hamas fighters and not civilians. But even the so-called precision-guided missiles and bombs (JDAMs) kill civilians and destroy infrastructure. A CNN article from December 2023 had already warned that:

“Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth, so the use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect. ‘The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,’ said John Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimizing civilian harm in conflict. […]
“The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.”

The one shipment that has been paused since Biden made his statement included 1,800 of these 2,000-lb. MK-84 bombs. The CNN article says that “According to two people familiar with the matter, the US has provided Israel with more than 5,400 MK-84s since October 7” - in other words, by 22 December (since that is the article’s date), the US had already provided Israel with three times the number of MK-84 bombs than were to be delivered in the “paused” shipment).

Reading Biden's statement, one gets the impression that he is correcting himself as he speaks – engaging in a kind of “forward retreat,” as the French call it, from what he knows to be fact. After saying “to deal with Rafah” (using the sinister euphemism “deal with” in place of “bomb”), he immediately corrects “Rafah” to “the cities.” But then he seems to realize that the whole point of pausing the supply of the bombs is that they indiscriminately destroy entire neighborhoods and so can’t be dropped on a city - not to mention one whose population has increased tenfold with the influx of refugees who fled there because they were told by Israel that the area was safe. That with that word “cities,” he is recognizing that “historically,” Israel has already been dropping US-supplied 2,000-lb. bombs on all the major population centers of Gaza for seven months. The CNN report cited above estimates that “hundreds” of the “massive bombs” were dropped on Gaza in the first month of the war alone. Biden then retreats into even further generalization: “deal with that problem” – an all-purpose phrase that any politician could apply to any situation, but which sounds macabre in its very banality when applied to the wholesale slaughter Biden himself is saying he wants to avoid but has in fact been enabling all along. The end result is that Biden comes off as being not only confused, but devious.

At this point, the question arises of why Biden would make such a statement without carefully crafting it beforehand, instead of choosing to say it in the context of an interview. The answer can come from looking not at the semantic, but at the pragmatic value of Biden’s statement - what its purpose was, as opposed to what truth it contains. Clearly the intention was not to threaten to withdraw weapons that are necessary for a possible assault on Rafah - not to draw a “red line.” Since the statement was made after the “strikes” on Rafah began, the shipment of those 1,800 bombs could have had no effect on Israel's decision to begin the assault. The real purpose of the statement was not to draw a “red line” beyond which Israel must not go. Its real purpose, in the relatively intimate context of an interview, and with a female journalist, was purely to manage perceptions - to reassure potential voters that Biden indeed has a humane side, making it acceptable for them to vote for him despite their revulsion at what they see happening in Gaza.

But Biden's use of words makes it clear that if he has a humane side, it has revealed itself only recently. His statement betrays the fact that he has known about the indiscriminate slaughter from the beginning and has personally – he says “I’m not supplying the weapons,” and not “we are not supplying” – been in a position to halt it. And that in his own mind, the slaughter is nothing more than “dealing with a problem.” The question that then arises is whether that “problem,” in Israel’s mind, is the existence of a terrorist organization called Hamas or the existence of Gaza itself as a space in which the people of Palestine can ever again live. And whether the United States, ultimately, will continue to aid Israel in solving that “problem.”