How did I miss this one?

The Senate added an anti-torture amendment to a military spending bill. Now, I know there are a lot of things that liberals and conservatives disagree on. I think, though, that "torture is bad" ranks right up there with "we love our country and want the best for it, and for it to be the best it can be" as things that are obvious and that I can't imagine anyone disagreeing on.

This amendment is designed to spell out, in no uncertain terms, the anti-torture stance that we all took for granted before the news came out about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. (And frankly, I've heard that not all the news has come out-- that it's actually worse than the horrible things we heard. Egad.) It says that "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment is prohibited. Amen.

Seriously, it's depressing to know that our nation has stooped so low. One of the things that I love the most about this country is that even when we fail-- and oh, we fail-- we have an idea in our collective mind that we're supposed to be better, we're supposed to be good, we're supposed to stand for something greater than just a military or economic powerhouse. Liberty. Equality. Freedoms and rights for everybody, not just the ones in charge at the time. Representation of the little guy, the downtrodden. Protection for everyone, not just the popular. We fail at it all the time, but we know the mission statement, we know what we're supposed to shoot for. Torture, even in the name of the protection of this country, does not jibe with those ideals. Indulging in such techniques tarnishes us as a country because it makes us hypocrites, it makes us liars. Either we stand for these ideals or we don't. Torture is not an American ideal. We're supposed to be the good guys. At the very least, we're supposed to try.

In the event that we screw up, we owe it to ourselves and the future of our country to look back at the mission statement, admit that we screwed up, and fix it. Denial doesn't help the situation. And although I'm appalled that it took so long to get this issue into a bill, I'm heartened that the bill passed the Senate 90-9. Yay, Senate!

You'd think that something like this would be practically guaranteed instant passage. Hey, who's pro-torture? (Except, clearly, the nine Senators who voted against this bill.) However...

However, even if the Senate passes the spending bill with the anti-torture language included, both face an uncertain future. The House of Representatives already has passed a similar bill without any anti-torture language.

Before any legislation could go to President Bush to be vetoed or signed into law, negotiators from the House and Senate must iron out a single version in a conference committee. The Bush administration's preferences often prevail in such conference committees, often insisted upon by House Republicans.

Last week the White House sent the Senate a "statement of administration policy" that declared strong opposition to the anti-torture language on the grounds that it would tie the president's hands in the war on terrorism. The statement said that if the anti-torture terms remained in the bill's final version, "the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill."

Bush has never vetoed any legislation. Vetoing a big military spending bill during wartime would be highly unusual if not unprecedented.

The loud THUD, THUD that you're hearing in the background would be the sound of me banging my head repeatedly on my desk.

Seriously, I just don't know what to do with this information. From where I stand, it's clear that there's more at stake than the misnamed War On Terror-- what's at stake is our identity as a nation, and the honor of our armed forces. Traditionally, the American soldier has been held as a symbol not just of strength, but of courage and honor. The implicit agreement in becoming a soldier is that you may be asked to kill, you may be asked to die, but only for honorable causes, with honorable actions. It is a great thing to defend the weak, to offer to die for that cause; it is assumed that an honorable type of person gives themselves to the military, and that the military in turn has a responsibility to respect the sacrifice of time and freedom and lives by teaching honor and acting honorably. By bringing torture into the equation, the current administration has confused the goals of our military and of our country: it takes the young men and women dedicated to the service of our nation and turns their hands to cruelty and torment.

This is not American.

Equality and freedom are not easy things. Easy to want for ourselves, perhaps, or for people we like, but equal rights for all means that people we don't like are just as free. It leaves us open; it leaves us vulnerable. It takes away the easy answers of tyranny and cruelty for the sake of self-protection. It is not comfortable, to be a free people. It is scary as hell if you think about it too hard: every freedom you enjoy may be used by someone else who does not like you and wishes you harm. We're forced to be equal with people we don't know and don't trust: that's the cost of being American.

We are always having to imagine what we would do if the shoe was on the other foot. What if Islam were the majority religion of America-- what rights would Christians want to protect? What if you were arrested for a crime you didn't commit-- how would you want to be treated? What if you lost your job and needed to declare bankruptcy-- what would you want to be able to hold onto? What if your child was the one being held in an enemy prison-- what treatment would they deserve?

We have to treat everyone with dignity even when it means giving up the special rights of the majority. We cannot allow torture just because we're in the position of being the torturers, because the time could come when we could be the tortured and then we'd have no real right to protest. We cannot be bullies because we're strong, because we might not always be so. We protect ourselves by sacrificing the easy options. We protect ourselves by holding ourselves to a higher standard, so that when someone else holds the majority and we are the small and pitiful minority, we still have a voice.

Every major religion (and, I expect, many of the minor ones) has a credo along the lines of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done to you. It is not just Christian: it is Muslim, it is Jewish, it is Buddhist. America is the current working model of government on that principle. It is not easy. It does leave us feeling vulnerable, because it takes away some of our options-- but that is a sacrifice made to our ideals, to our values. It is a sacrifice to become the nation we want to be. It's hard. It's scary. And it's a choice.