Author of Liberty

There's been a little confusion about the President's speach last night over what excatly it means for the longer term. Orginially, some proponents of a "surge"--regardless of how much they proposed to surge by--seemed to sell the idea as a way of getting out of Iraq. Surge now and forever hold your peace.

The President's speach last night, however, ended on an interesting note:

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours.

The Author of Liberty is a phrase Bush has used in the past, notably at his second inauguration, also at the end of that speach:

History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

So who is this "Author of Liberty?" A quick google search comes up with several different answers, amongst them

Libby the cat

But when it comes to all things Bush, you really need to turn to The Weekly Standard, wherein Terry Eastland, the editor, wrote following the second inaugural address:

For man to choose against freedom, Bush seems to imply, is for man to choose against what he is constituted to be. For Bush, it seems, man's direction is set by the way he is, by the hope of liberty within--a hope that is planted by none other than the Author of Liberty. Ecclesiastes says that eternity is set in the hearts of men. So, too, Bush says, is liberty. ...

But does that mean that Bush believes God has never used America in that way? Hardly. Might Bush reject the notion of America as a chosen nation, a New Israel in special relationship to God, but at the same time embrace the notion that God works through nations, including America, to bring about his purposes, including the triumph of human liberty (if indeed that is one of his purposes)? The answer is clearly yes, especially on the evidence of this speech. And might Bush think that America, more than any other nation today, is being used by God for that purpose? So it seems, not just on the evidence of this speech but all of Bush's rhetoric. Note this from the First Inaugural: "If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be lead"--and connect the dots.

The key point is that Bush believes in providence. Few national Democrats share that same belief, though until recent decades most adhered to it. To many Democrats, the idea that God is actively at work in the world, and that He works through nations including the United States, indeed centrally through the United States, to bring about his will--all of that seems a bit old-fashioned, not to say hopelessly naive.

That Author's name is none other than Goh-hod! So what are we to make of it? For one thing, the passive "where mistakes were have been made" might be more understandable. The ultimate aim for God is to direct the US to give those Arabs some liberty. Since that's what God wants, that's what he'll eventually get. Nothing about going to war in the first place could therefore be wrong, since it was God's will. Moreover, any mistake made in the execution of God's will is simply a result of the fact that humans err. God, on the other hand doesn't.

What's all this mean? I guess he's saying that going from our original 150K soldiers down to 130K was a "mistake" since God's will has not yet been achieved. Therefore, he's going back up to that number by sending in an additional 20K or so troops. What that means in the wider context is that we'll stay there until the Iraqis--and quite possibly Iraq's neighbors too--will have attained "liberty." That could take a while. Look for similar statements from candidates in '08, and decide for yourself if you want to continue down that path, or if maybe, just maybe we didn't quite hear God's message correctly.