“The May 5 fighting near the Brock Road intersection had left A. P. Hill’s Confederates not only outnumbered but also disorganized. Hill was not worried, however, because Lee had assured him that General James Longstreet’s First Corps would be on the field by dawn to relieve him. Therefore, when Hill’s two division commanders, Henry Heth and Cadmus Wilcox, came to him that night and asked for permission to awaken the troops and prepare them for the next day’s fight, Hill refused. It was a critical misjudgment. Longstreet was late, and when Hancock resumed his attacks the next morning, he quickly sent Hill’s men on the retreat.

Here in the clearing near the Tapp farm stood 12 guns of Confederate Lieutenant Colonel William Poague’s artillery battalion. As Hancock’s men pursued Hill’s Confederates into this field, Poague emptied his guns, driving the Federals back into the woods. But Union soldiers soon infiltrated the woods south of the road and began picking off Poague’s gunners. Hill, who had once served in the artillery, hurried to help with the guns, but still the battalion threatened to give way. Just then, fresh gray-clad troops appeared on the field. It was General John Gregg’s Texas Brigade, part of Longstreet’s corps. When Lee discovered the brigade’s identity, he is said to have shouted, “Hurrah for Texas! Hurrah for Texas!”

Forming a hasty battle line, Gregg’s men began moving steadily across the field. Part way across, Lee joined them and appeared intent on leading the charge. But the Texans would not allow it. With shouts of “Lee to the rear!” they turned their commander back. The brigade then swept ahead into the opposite woods, checking the Federals and giving Longstreet time to bring up the rest of his corps.”

syncrodox commenting at Small Dead Animals:

Wow! Who knew nasty e-mails warranted so much attention. In retrospect, Ambassador Chris Stevens would have gotten more attention sending snotty e-mails to random citizens rather than asking the State Department for more security.

Frank J. Fleming marvels at what true genius can accomplish.

Sure didn’t take long for Obama to squander the goodwill from killing bin Laden. I mean, you got the most wanted man in the world, so how do you take that and start to make yourself look like an idiot? Well, let’s have Obama show us how.

So there’s debate about releasing the photos of Osama. I don’t even really care about it. Obama administration could have just said, “We’re not going to release the photos because we don’t feel like it.” and I would have been fine with that. Instead it’s the usual, “If we release the photos, it will make Muslims in the Middle East mad.” Really? There are Muslims in the Middle East who just give us hugs all the time, but if they see a photo of dead Osama they’re suddenly going to become murderous? But they were okay with us killing him — just don’t want to see the photo? I’m sorry, but anyone who would be stirred up to commit murder by an Osama photo are people we should be already hunting down and trying to kill — so stirring them up will just make them easier to find. But it’s hard to believe it will stir them up since so many in the Middle East are just constantly angry all the time at the most moronic things imaginable. When do we just say, “These guys are angry idiots constantly getting enraged by everything, so let’s stop worrying about what will make them angrier lest we catch some of their psychosis trying to think like them.”? If we want to end anger in the Middle East, let’s just send the message that being stupid angry is how you get dead. So everyone who is like, “Me see photo! Me want to murder now!” why don’t you learn to count to ten before you end up like Osama. And the Obama administration: Stop trying to coddle the feelings of people who celebrate a mass murder and instead concentrate on the feeling of your own people.

And then there is the changing story of how the assault went down. Now I, like pretty much every American, don’t really care how it went down as long as we got the end result of taking out Osama. The official report could have been, “Osama begged for mercy while we ripped off his leg and beat him to death with it,” and everyone would be like, “Great job, Obama!” But instead we keep getting this changing story about whether Osama was armed or not and whether he used a human shield — things we don’t even really care about — and now they’re like, “We’re done talking about this.” Hey, Obama, no one cares what the details of what happened in the raid, so just stop looking weasely about it.

So just, a couple days later, we go from Obama’s one flash of competency to looking like this probably all happened in spite of him, because, really, what an idiot.

————————————

Jim Treacher says that President Obama is taking his victory lap in a clown car.

It’s been less than 72 hours since President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Since then, his administration has been hard at work screwing the whole thing up.

Let’s start with that speech Sunday night. It was originally announced for 10:30 but didn’t happen until 11:30. By that time, the news Obama was supposed to be breaking had broken already. Not the best start. Presumably he was delayed arguing with his speechwriters about keeping in all the “I,” “Me,” and “Mine.” Everything having to do with this raid was “I”; anything that could be attributed to the Bush administration was “We.” “I gave the order, I did this, I did that.” The hallmark of any great leader is a willingness to bravely take credit for the hard work and sacrifice of others.

Then there’s the official narrative of the raid, which has already gone through more versions than the Star Wars movies. First Bin Laden had a gun; then he didn’t. He hid behind one of his wives, who was killed; wait, no, scratch that, she’s alive and wasn’t his wife. Maybe? Now Leon Panetta says he and President Obama didn’t actually see the whole thing go down, after the White House made a point of releasing that instantly iconic picture of the whole gang watching it go down.

Isn’t it kind of important to get all that stuff right the first time? Personally, I don’t care if Bin Laden was holding a tray of freshly baked cookies and asking our boys if they wanted any tea when they shot him. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? As far as I’m concerned, Osama Bin Laden committed suicide by 9/11. But now the White House just looks like a bunch of bumblers. If you’re not exactly sure what happened, why give details you might have to retract? How in the world do you screw up a win this big? (Amanda Carey has a wrap-up of the inconsistencies in the official story.)

And now the Obama administration is showing decisive leadership on the issue of dithering. “Gee, should we show the pictures of Bin Laden with his Navy SEAL makeover? Won’t that make people mad?” The Abu Ghraib pics were in the public interest; visual evidence of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 isn’t. Keeping us from seeing flag-draped coffins was bad; keeping us from seeing a blood-drenched mass-murderer is good. Now they’ve finally decided not to release the pictures, after Panetta already said they would. I’m sure that’s Obama’s final decision unless he changes his mind. Stay tuned for the latest round of polls.

Read the whole thing.

General Petraeus, CNN reports, is warning that some Bible-thumping Florida church’s intention to burn the Koran next Saturday might endanger US troops.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Monday criticized a Florida church’s plan to burn copies of the Quran on September 11, warning the demonstration “could cause significant problems” for American troops overseas.

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan,” Gen. David Petraeus said in a statement issued Monday.

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, plans to mark the anniversary of al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by burning copies of the Muslim holy book. The church insists the event is “neither an act of love nor of hate,” but a warning against what it calls the threats posed by Islam.

The event has drawn criticism from Muslims in the United States and overseas, with thousands of Indonesians gathering outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday to protest the planned Quran burning.

“The burning is not only an insult to the holy Quran, but an insult to Islam and Muslims around the world,” said Muhammad Ismail, a spokesman for the hard-line Indonesian Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qurans “is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems — not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

Can one begin to imagine General McArthur warning Americans against burning the Rising Sun flag during WWII, or General Patton advising a news organization that a symbolic burning of Mein Kampf might inflame Waffen SS units?

If you’re scared of the camel-fornicating sons of the Prophet, you shouldn’t be in the US military in time of war.

Frankly, I think instead of these endless exercises in cultural sensitivity and attempts to placate the religious bigotry of the Saracens, we ought to issue US troops bathroom tissue imprinted with the Koran and burn the Koran daily as part of routine latrine maintenance.

We’re at war with militant Islam. Islamic intolerance and insolent demands for deference to their superstition are the hallmarks of the ideology which produced the September 11th attacks on the United States. The Koran and the Prophet Mohammed are Islamicist symbols in very much the same way the meatball flag, the swastika, and pictures of Adolph Hitler were intrinsic to the ideology of our enemies in WWII.

Trying to fight a war, while supporting your enemies’ proposal to build a combined recruiting center and victory monument in the vicinity of their surprise attack, and while insisting on reverential treatment of their symbols, is nothing short of ridiculous.

All this shows that liberalism is so thoroughly decadent, so utterly bound up in namby pamby inhibitions against conflict and animosity, that liberals are basically incapable of making war. The liberal consciousness requires military action inevitably to be accompanied by simultaneous appeasement, and prohibits a genuine commitment to defeating the enemy out of self-defeating fears of antagonizing anyone. All liberal wars are Korea and Vietnam. They all have to end either in concession and withdrawal or in stalemate. For liberals, appeasement is always a substitute for victory.

I didn’t originally think much of that silly Florida church’s Koran-burning demonstration, but I’ve changed my mind. I plan to look for my own copy and take it out and light it up on Saturday, too, just to affirm a general policy of Americans declining to placate hirsute barbarians afflicted with superstitious extremism. If that makes the Taliban angry, that is just too bad.

Duck!

If I were to follow the examples of Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, or Barack Obama, and invent my own religion, could I demand that the nearest municipality boasting a Ten Commandments monument allow me to erect another monument listing my own teachings on the courthouse lawn? Should the city fathers fail to oblige would a federal circuit court of appeals (that isn’t the 9th Circuit) rule in my favor? Is it possible to imagine that the United States Supreme Court could wind up ruling on my petition?

The Wall Street Journal reports that it has all worked out just that way for Corky Ra.

A couple of decades after a visit from “beings Extraterrestrial” inspired him to found the Church of Summum in 1975, Summum Bonum Amen Ra, born Claude Nowell and known as Corky, had another epochal encounter. He saw a monolith depicting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse grounds in Salt Lake City, says Su Menu, the Summum religion’s current leader, and “felt it would be nice to have the Seven Aphorisms next to them.” The monument would be inscribed with the principles that, according to Summum doctrine, Moses initially intended to deliver to the Hebrews before deciding they weren’t ready to understand them.

Several Utah municipalities Mr. Ra approached declined the opportunity to display the Seven Aphorisms, provoking a legal battle that arrived at the Supreme Court Wednesday.

Daniel Henniger editorializes:

In 2007, the federal appeals court for the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of Summum, giving the religion permission to put up its Seven Aphorisms monument in Pioneer Park. The Supreme Court will decide whether the Summums of America deserve their own patch of the public green.

Laughable though it looks, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum is a textbook example of tensions that have pulled our courts between noble readings of the Constitution — in this case, the First Amendment’s speech protections — and what the average person might call the common-sense requirements of running a civil society.

Henniger is perfectly correct. Modern liberalism’s abject inability to resist any appeal couched in idealistic rhetoric gives it a terminable case of philosophic round heels.