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We have now reached the one-year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act. But rather than protecting democracy, the law represents its betrayal and an occasion for moral shame. Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate could not succeed in its recent effort to repeal just one aspect of that law, the suspension of certain protections against illegal imprisonment. This failure represents just how far America's moral authority has fallen in the name of a so-called war on terror.

The Military Commissions Act granted President Bush unprecedented power. This act became possible when most Republicans (including Denny Rehburg) and a few politically frightened Democrats (not including Max Baucus) voted to give Bush the power to define anyone he wanted as an illegal enemy combatant, to imprison him or her without trial, to decide which interrogation methods he wished to be permissible and to define coercion in reference to coerced evidence in any way he chooses. The law also narrowed the definition of torture - partially eliminating rape as a form of torture - and abolished the right of those held in military prisons to challenge their imprisonment. This right - known as habeas corpus - represents a fundamental distinction between democracies and tyrannies.

With 2008 presidential candidates now competing to be tough on terror, we witness the way in which the erosion of values once considered sacred to Western democracies gradually gains acceptability. In recent debates, Mitt Romney called for doubling the prison at Guantanamo Bay, which has become synonymous worldwide with America's loss of moral authority. Rudy Guiliani asserted that if necessary, interrogators should use “any method they can think of,” including waterboarding prisoners, an old torture technique long considered morally unacceptable. Only John McCain, the only candidate to have been tortured, had the wisdom to acknowledge that “It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are.”

I teach courses in ethics, and I have often used the prohibition against torture as an example of a moral absolute. Whatever else people of goodwill may disagree about morally, all people should at least agree that this moral rule ought never to be violated - no matter what. Recently unearthed Department of Justice memos seem to confirm, however, that we can no longer count these basic values among those for which Americans stand and fight.

Some may object that we face a new kind of war, brought to us by terrorists who have no respect for life, who slaughter innocents without mercy. This is most certainly true. But what, then, are we fighting for, if there is no brightly distinguishable boundary between their respect for humanity and ours? Mere security?

My students are now reading “Antigone,” an ancient Greek tragedy depicting the fate of a king who demanded absolute authority to promote the security of his citizens. Yet there comes a humble messenger reminding the citizenry of the world's first democracy that “there is no condition of man's life that stands secure.” The king who chose to elevate security above all other values came to his ruin.

In electing our next president, we have an opportunity to begin to repair America's moral authority. We can also ask our congressional delegation to support legislation designed to reverse the moral shame of October 2006. In the meantime, I will still ask my students to consider torture as an absolute moral wrong. But I hope I can soon look them in the eye and tell them that our country stands for that as well, knowing that our recent moral shame has been absolved by a new group of political leaders whose strength lies in restoring the values that take even greater courage to defend.

Mark J. Hanson, Ph.D., is a teacher, writer and former associate for Ethics and Society at the Hastings Center, an ethics research institute in Garrison, New York.

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