So, the hard-working management and dedicated staff of The Daily Cardinal today send the 112th volume off to bed. And I have the distinct privilege of singing a lullaby.
In this role, I find myself tempted to synthesis the events of the past few months into a couple of take-away thoughts and concepts or to call back to the stage those public figures whose skill-or buffoonery-was described in this space. Yet I cannot do either thing, for there is pressing business to attend to.
On May 1-which, incidentally, happened to be both Loyalty Day and the National Day of Prayer-the president flew onto the deck of the USS Lincoln and, some hours later, declared that the war in Iraq was over and won.
In that speech, the president tied the invasion to the larger war on terrorism, notwithstanding the fact that a clear and verifiable connection between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorist network that struck our nation has not yet been made. He declared that no terrorist organization will ever obtain weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, despite the fact that the armaments that were the pretext for the invasion have not been found-even a month after our armed forces, whose skill and bravery is unquestionable, claimed control of Baghdad. And he repeated the doctrine that led to the invasion and could lead to wars with other nations in the coming months and years.
However, at the end of the speech, the president said something remarkable to the crew of the Lincoln. The president declared that, \wherever you go, you carry a message of hope-a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: 'To the captives, come out, and to those in darkness, be free.'""
After the speech, television commentators-fresh off their fawning assessment of the president's dramatic and, as it turns out, completely unnecessary flight onto the Lincoln aboard a Navy jet-heaped the now-expected unconditional and uncritical praise upon the commander-in-chief. But they failed to note that the president had just declared before the nation and the world that the members of our armed forces are now holy warriors.
This, friends, is no exaggeration. Generally speaking, the Book of Isaiah speaks of the coming of the Messiah. And according to John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, the particular verse quoted by the president-Isaiah 49:9-declares that Christ would provide ""divine illumination"" to those ""who are fast bound by the cords of their sins and taken captive by the devil at his will.""
Some might want to think that the president simply threw out a passage that sounded good without understanding the context that surrounds it. But that is demonstratively implausible. Look, John Wesley founded the Methodist faith. The president is a Methodist-and a purportedly fervent believer in that faith. As such, the president, in all likelihood, accepts Wesley's interpretation of Isaiah 49:9 as being accurate, authoritative and beyond dispute.
It therefore logically follows that when the president cited Isaiah, he effectively charged our armed forces with the duty of bringing the light of Christ into the world-and worse still, to do so through the imposition of dreadful fear and deadly force, upon the innocents who have the misfortune of being placed in the path of our blessed bullets and our holy bombs. And the public-following the president's cheerleaders in the media-has greeted this news with indifference, if not tacit approval.
Those who remember the international furor caused by the president when he, in the days following the terrorist attacks on the East Coast, couched the war on terrorism in religious terms-going so far as to call it a crusade at one point-would be astounded, but not at all surprised that he has made the same mistake twice. And those who have observed the president's behavior since his inauguration will not see this declaration as a shocking development, but rather as another troubling demonstration of his disrespect for reason, as well as his bastardization of the Christian faith.
Yet the president presses on without care and without shame-for, as Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine, said recently, the president is ""so secure in his belief that the course of human events rests in 'the hand of a just and faithful God' that he counts his ignorance as a virtue and regards his lack of curiosity as a sign of moral strength.""
The president has the right to hold onto his religious view of the world-demented as it is. But he absolutely must lose his ignorance and start thinking critically-and he must do so in a damned hurry.
With that, and with gratitude to all, I take my leave. Thank you, and good luck.
