For the past several weeks, as more and more details about torture under the Bush Administration have come to light, I've been arguing strenuously that it is essential to our dignity as a nation that we prosecute at least Jay Bybee and John Yoo to send a message to the world that we are a nation of laws that has an ethical and moral compass, if an imperfect one.  I believed, literally until the last few days, that the idea that something of the American ideal would die if we allowed torture to go unpunished.  But now my view is shifted: I believe that something of the American ideal is already dead.

I'm watching now as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News (along with the newspapers and the online world) debate the legitimacy and morality of torture.  Now we are hardly debating whether or not to prosecute the torturers and torture enablers. The debate has now shifted to whether torture is right and whether torture works.  I'm hearing American voices, in large number, proudly and passionately defending torture as a justified and moral course.  These voices may ultimately be the minority, but at a certain point it doesn't matter.  If a nation is so closely divided on such a basic issue of human rights and morality, it's not really relevant who is the majority and who is the minority.  If 40% of the members of a society think cannibalism is ok, the 60% are going to be in trouble.

I feel certain now, with Obama's very discouraging decision today to bury the detainee abuse photos and continue the Bush cover-up, that this administration lacks the political will to pursue meaningful prosecutions.  But even if they prove me wrong on that front, will it matter?  Torture is not only about the basic ethical and human rights issues.  It is about the message we send to the rest of the world about who we are and what we represent.  The world is seeing who we are RIGHT NOW, on our cable news, in our newspapers, on our blogs. They are seeing a nation that can't come near reaching a consensus on whether or not to torture.  Even so-called moderates like Harold Ford are coming out for torture.

So at this point, even if we do prosecute Bybee and Yoo, or even Cheney, such prosecutions will take place in a country bitterly divided over the issue.  And if there is a healthy debate about it now, you can rest assured that if there were to be even the smallest terrorist attack inside the US, or even a truly credible threat of one, suddenly the 40% or so that think torture is ok would swell to 70% or more, and Gumby Obama would bend to the pressure and reauthorize torture under some new euphemistic name.  This is what America has become, and it makes me sick to my stomach that this is what has happened to this once-great country.  It's one thing to debate tax policy, and health care policy, and regulatory policy.  But like cannibalism, and rape, and murder, a civilized country cannot even have a DEBATE about whether torture is acceptable.  So instead of debating WHICH torturers to punish and HOW SEVERE the punishments should be, we are instead debating whether or not torture is perfectly fine, and it tells the world that America is an ethically and morally bankrupt society. 

To quote Denzel Washington's Anthony Hubbard from the terribly underrated and prophetic film, The Siege, "If you torture him, General, then everything that we've fought, and bled, and died for is over. And they've won.  They've already won."