HALF-FULL REPORT 07/05/13

I hope you and your families had a wonderful Fourth of July, and that my filling in for Jack Wheeler on the HFR this week won’t diminish your enjoyment of the holiday weekend.

I don’t think Barack Obama is having a good time.  In what has been the worst week ever for his presidency, there’s been a race to see which would collapse completely faster – his foreign policy or his domestic policy.

Because of the big doings in Egypt, my money’s on foreign policy.  But when Zero’s administration admits, in effect, that his "signature achievement" in domestic policy is unworkable, you have a strong contender for biggest flop.

It’s been so bad his fan club in the news media has been reduced to calling Obama incompetent – because all other plausible explanations are worse.  Liberal journalists are starting to realize they’ve made a Faustian bargain, Victor Davis Hanson thinks.

The prosecutors in the murder trial of George Zimmerman may have had a worse week.  Every witness they called bolstered the case for the defense. 

Details on this and other stuff that’s happened in what’s been one of the most significant first weeks in July since 1776 are coming up. But first, let’s revisit the most important Fourth of July week ever:

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The battle of Gettysburg in 1863 is "the hinge of American, and hence world, history," said George Will.   Peter Wehner agrees. "If the North had lost instead of won at Gettysburg, America, as we know it, would have ended."

It is difficult for us today to imagine the carnage.  In just the three days from July 1 to July 3, 1863, 51,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or went missing.  That’s more than all of our losses in the Korean War, (36,574) more than our battle deaths during the Vietnam war (47,434). 

I think the siege that concluded the next day, the Fourth of July, at Vicksburg was even more important — both because of the strategic significance of cutting the Confederacy in two, and because it was his victory at Vicksburg that prompted President Lincoln to put in overall command the one general who could win the war – Ulysses S. Grant.  My friend Mac Owens describes the campaign here.

Gettysburg was a Union victory because Robert E. Lee made an uncharacteristic tactical mistake.  Vicksburg was a Union victory because Grant waged a brilliant campaign.

I don’t begrudge Gettysburg the attention it receives.  The best account of the battle is Michael Shaara’s novel "Killer Angels," which is "faction" at its finest. It introduced me to my all time favorite American hero, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. 

It was the bayonet charge he led at the Little Round Top after his men had run out of ammunition that was the key to the Union victory, and thus "the hinge of American, and hence world, history." Our friend Ralph Peters pays tribute here to the under appreciated general who won the battle of Gettysburg, George Meade. 

I just wish that Vicksburg, and Grant, weren’t given such short shrift.  He was a better general, and a better president, than many give him credit for.  His memoir is the finest ever written by a president – and he wrote it while dying of throat cancer.  This may be changing.  Michael Shaara’s son Jeff has a new book out on the Vicksburg campaign. Now to this week’s news:

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In the annals of diplomatic ineptitude, nothing can top the policy which generated this headline in USA Today:  "In Egypt, U.S. draws ire from both sides."  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, writes here about "what has to be one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory."

Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians demonstrated against the corrupt, but pro-American regime of Hosni Mubarak, and by implication, against the military, because Mubarak had been chief of staff of the Air Force before becoming vice president, then – after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, president.

Last Sunday (6/30), in the biggest political protest in the history of the world, millions of Egyptians demonstrated against the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohamed Morsi – and against the Obama administration, for the favors it had showered upon it. 

In response, the military overthrew the regime.  Morsi and many other leaders of the Ikhwan have been placed under arrest.  Celebrations erupted all across Egypt.  The bete noir of democracy protesters just two years ago, the military is now hailed as their champions, while they condemn Obama and his ambassador to Egypt as supporters of terrorism. 

They’ve done us all a favor, said Con Coughlin, defense editor for the London Telegraph. The cops also have been rehabilitated in the eyes of the people, reported a Wall Street Journal reporter on the scene.

"The final, desperate hours of Mohamed Morsi were in one sense merciful, but also pathetic," said Nathan Brown in the New Republic.

After Sunday’s massive protests, the Obama administration warned the military against launching a coup.  But Egypt’s military, apparently, has as little fear of defying Zero – and as much scorn for him and his minions – as do the leaders of Russia, China, and Ecuador, and, well – just about everybody else in the world.

So far, Zero has responded to the collapse of his foreign policy in Egypt as he customarily does to crises: by waffling and lying.  He continues to say nice things about Morsi and the Ikhwan, but – despite the sudden fondness he claims for democratic process – he has not as of this writing called what happened in Egypt this week a coup. 

That’s important, because U.S. law requires that aid be cut off to nations where there is a coup. Egypt is a failed state, an economic basket case where there will be starvation without massive amounts of aid.  It is now very much in our interests to provide it.  Egypt needs capitalism more than it needs democracy, says the London Telegraph.

This wasn’t a coup.  It was a revolution, says Robert Spencer.  What we should cut off is any aid to the Muslim Brotherhood, says Sen. Cruz.  He’s right.  

Secretary of State John Kerry has spent the crisis on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.  Which – considering that pundits are now openly asking this question – probably was best for all concerned.

The Ikhwan took to the streets today to protest the coup.  There could yet be civil war.  Stay tuned.  And keep your fingers crossed.  In the meantime, people could be dancing to the Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian again.

 
 
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On Tuesday (7/02), the administration announced quietly (on the blog of a Treasury Department official) that it planned to delay enforcement of the employer mandate in Obamacare until 2015. 

The purpose of the delay is to give Democrats "breathing room" by concealing until after the midterm elections the extent of job losses it’s likely to cause.

So much for the Democrat strategy of "embracing Obamacare" Politico reported last month. "Smart Democrats are beginning to get frantic about the need to suppress the confusion and hide the cost of ObamaCare between now and the 2014 midterm elections," said GOP consultant Ed Rogers.

Nothing to see here, said shadow president Valerie Jarrett in a post on her own blog.  The purpose of the decision was to cut red tape.  The rest of Obamacare is on track.  (The White House hilariously describes "the magic of Valerie" here.)

Not a big deal, Democrats agree.

Yeah, right.  What Democrats are saying reminds her of the Black Knight in the Monty Python sketch, said Jennifer Rubin.  It’s only a flesh wound:

 
 
The decision "raised immediate questions about whether the rest of the law can be implemented on time," said The Hill newspaper.  "Obamacare delay hints at deeper troubles," said USA Today.  The Hill lists 10 Obamacare fumbles.

"It is incredibly heartening that there is now bipartisan agreement that the implementation of Obamacare is a mess," said National Review Editor Rich Lowry. 

"The administration can call it whatever it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obama’s signature initiative."

"What this first official indication of distress tells us is that no delay in implementation will be long enough to avert the looming economic disaster that is ObamaCare," said Jonathan Tobin. Other conservatives agree.

And by the way, the delay is illegal.  House Republicans plan to investigate. Reviews of the decision by Zero’s friends in the news media have been brutal.

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The troubles of his Muslim Brotherhood pal Mohamed Morsi drew attention away from Obama’s much ballyhooed African trip, which annoyed him. But it may be just as well.  Africans wish he were more like George W. Bush, the Washington Post reported. 

Jack Wheeler reported the disappointment of a prominent Kenyan in Zero here.  A prominent Nigerian expresses his disappointment here.

* * * *

People now think Obama is more dishonest and more incompetent than was George W. Bush, according to a Pew poll released Monday.

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It’s a good thing the prosecution rested today in the murder trial of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin, because their own witnesses have supported Zimmerman’s claim he acted in self defense, says attorney Andrew Branca, who’s been covering the case for the blog Legal Insurrection, and is the go to guy for info on the trial.

After this travesty, who in their right mind would ever hire the prosecutors? Daniel Flynn asks.

One consequence of all the media hype about the trial is Americans now think blacks are more racist than whites.

* * * *

Pope John Paul II will be canonized.

* * * *

My heroes of the week are Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, George Meade, and U.S. Grant.

For us today, the two great takeaways from the Civil War should be how much more bitterly we were divided then than we are now, and how many Americans then – about 750,000 in a population of 30 million – gave the last full measure of devotion for liberty, as they saw it.

Things are bad now.  They’ll get worse.  There is a severe price to pay when we have in the White House at best an utter incompetent, more likely a traitor. Most of the bill is yet to be presented. A lot of conservatives today would rather bitch about it than fight.  They throw up their hands, declare all is lost.  The America we’ve known and loved is gone forever.

"If you look around today, you’ll find these defeatists and counterrevolutionaries in full moan, says Michael Ledeen. "They tell us we’re doomed.  We’ve lost our faith, they say, we’re badly led, they whine, our problems overwhelm us.  Woe are we, woe are we."

Horsefeathers.  When you’re out of ammunition, the thing to do is to fix bayonets and charge down the hill. But we aren’t running out of ammo.  It’s piling up – more this week than ever before. Our situation is nowhere near as desperate as was that of the 20^th Maine. It’s Zero and his minions who are out of ideas, and who are running out of time.

"Today’s enemies are not in the same league as those of my first years, or those of the end of the Cold War," Michael Ledeen said. "We have glorious opportunities. Obama has shown the world what life would be like without America, and lots of people don’t like that picture."

"Without Carter, there would not have been Reagan," he said. "We’ve actually got quite a good hand.  If we play well, Obama will join Ozymandias and his ilk in Hope."

The Founding Fathers would be disappointed in us, said 71 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll this week.  Let’s disappoint them no longer.