Between the House and the Senate, Congress has sent a resounding message that the United States still believes in the standards of decency that are the nation’s historic hallmark.

The House voted 308 to 122 Wednesday for anti-torture language that Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who himself was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wants attached to the Fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill. The Senate previously voted 90 to 9 for it.

Those bipartisan and lopsided margins are important for two reasons. One, they make President Bush’s threat of a veto toothless. Faced with such political conviction, Bush reached an accord with McCain to support the language. Two, they make an unmistakable declaration that the country has not abandoned its principles – at least as far as public policy goes.

As a technical matter, the language prohibiting “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in the custody of the U.S. government is little more than a restatement of existing law. Moreover, there is no provision for enforcement.

Still, it is a message the world needs to hear. More important, it is a message that the United States urgently needs to send.

In the heightened emotions that surfaced after 9/11, a number of things happened that brought proud American values into doubt. The Patriot Act, rapidly passed with minimal debate, encroached on the civil rights of U.S. citizens. Many foreigners of Arabic descent were rounded up as terrorist suspects and held without being charged and without access to legal counsel. And as the war in Afghanistan and Iraq began to produce prisoners, embarrassing disclosures about their mistreatment began to surface.

Those patterns of conduct are hard to reconcile with the United States’ justification of its military involvement in the Middle East on the grounds of spreading freedom.

As McCain has said, along with such others as ex-Gen. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, imposing a strict standard on the way the United States treats prisoners gives us standing to demand it of others. Refusing to do so, gives other nations’ forces an implicit excuse to mistreat Americans.

We know that such reciprocity won’t always be achieved, but when the world looks for the United States, it should be able to find us traveling the high road.