“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

When he takes office in January, Barack Obama will have an opportunity accorded very few world leaders – the opportunity to lead the United States’ atonement for the human rights abuses our government has committed over the past seven years. In doing so, the United States can re-establish the moral leadership we abdicated under George W. Bush and, by restoring our former moral authority, we can regain at least some small bit of respect from the world community.

For decades, one of the keystones of U.S. foreign policy was our commitment to human rights and civil liberties. We have defined our relationships with other countries based on their human rights records; we decried the abusive treatment of individuals by dictatorships and rogue governments; and we opened our doors to “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

But with the attacks of 9/11, our government’s attitude toward the treatment of anyone who might remotely pose a threat to National Security changed to an attitude of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us,” and governmental policy changed from “innocent until proven guilty” to George Bush’s cowboy mentality of “shoot first; ask questions later.”

Our invasion of Iraq was purported to be an effort to establish democracy in a key sector of the Middle East. But while we have continued to espouse freedom and democracy, our government’s abusive practices have undermined struggles for freedom in many parts of the world.

With the revelation of gross abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, we discarded our mantle of leadership in the fight for human rights and in doing so we abdicated our responsibility to stand up against others who would oppress innocents.

With a new administration and a new vision coming to the White House, the United States has the opportunity to move boldly to restore our moral authority behind the worldwide human rights movement.

Barack Obama has pledged to shut down Guantánamo and he has vowed to end torture. These actions do not need approval of Congress; they can be accomplished by executive orders to close the prison and by enforcing existing prohibitions against torture by any representative of the United States, including both government employees and government contractors, such as the rogue mercenaries of Blackwater Worldwide.

Obama must put an end to the secret and indefinite detention of those suspected of posing a threat to our national security and must restore their right to due process under the law, including the right of habeas corpus. And the Congress, in concert with the new Executive, must take steps to ensure the travesties and atrocities of the past seven years can never again occur.

There is a lingering question over whether or not the perpetrators of the nearly decade-long string of atrocities should be punished. This includes those who put in place the policies that not only allowed the abuses to happen but facilitated them. Documented evidence exists showing this chain of culpability goes all the way to the top of the Executive branch and points a finger directly at George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Emotions run high on both sides of this question. On the Left, there are those who will not be satisfied until Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzalez and others in the Administration are summarily punished in a manner similar to Nazi war criminals. On the Right, there are those who would sweep all questions of culpability under the rug and move forward pretending nothing untoward ever happened.

The only reasonable solution, it would seem, is the appointment of a nonpartisan expert commission charged with conducting a thorough review of U.S. practices related to unwarranted arrest, torture, secret detention, extraordinary rendition, abandonment of habeas corpus and related matters. As Jimmy Carter recently wrote, “Acknowledging to the world that the United States also has made mistakes will give credence to our becoming ‘a more perfect union’ — a message that would resonate worldwide.”

The United States has nearly always sat at the pinnacle of leadership in worldwide human rights. Barack Obama has an unprecedented opportunity to restore us to that place of leadership and to re-establish unfettered support for the oppressed throughout the world who reach for freedom. He must have the full support of everyone who calls himself an “American.”