Last week, the Minnesota-based Center for Victims of Torture issued "A Call to Reject Torture." Signed by more than 100 prominent foreign policy, military, national security and faith leaders, it's a "call on all of our fellow Americans and public officials to reject torture unequivocally and without exception, in keeping with American law and values."

Such a clarion call should not be needed. But, tragically, some politicians — most prominently Donald Trump — as well as some citizens still consider torture an option, including an alarming 58 percent who told the Pew Research Center in 2015 that it could be justified against suspected terrorists in order to gain information about possible attacks.

That attitude backfired in the post-9/11 era, according to leaders at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, who wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: "Washington's use of torture greatly damaged national security. It incited extremism in the Middle East, hindered cooperation with U.S. allies, exposed American officials to legal repercussions, undermined U.S. diplomacy, and offered a convenient justification for other governments to commit human-rights abuses. The takeaway is clear: reinstating torture would be a costly mistake."

Most important, torture is morally wrong. So a nation that aspires to exceptionalism should reject it.

"We're trying to draw some attention and have some impact on what is a dangerous inflection point that not only is related to the current political discourse, it's also related to the entertainment industry," Curt Goering, the center's executive director told an editorial writer.

Hollywood has First Amendment license. Public officials have no such leeway. As the center's call plainly states, torture is explicitly banned by U.S. law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Army Regulation 190-8, and by U.N. and Geneva Convention protocols the U.S. has ratified.

"On one hand, we like to think of ourselves as a human-rights respecting country, that we stand for justice and dignity and the rule of law in the world, and yet we appear to have a public whose acceptance of one of the most egregious forms of human-rights violations, torture, is growing," Goering said. He added: "So how we square that practice and sentiment with our ideals, there's a gap there."

The "Call to Reject Torture" is an admirable effort to close that gap.