Bill,

I think if we looked closely enough we'll find that many Americans also slap the crap out of their mothers, and even kill them. No one group has a monopoly on bad behavior. While I know this wasn't the point of the "the night the soldiers came," it does stand out in your excerpt of Tim Blair's post critiquing the WAPO article. Mr. Blair states, in part:

"Almost all of the events are based on the testimony of an aggrieved Iraqi who uses twitchy hyperbole and repeatedly slaps the crap out of his mother. Which is fine I suppose, because that's their culture, and all. And who are we to judge an apparently slap-happy, mom-beating culture?I suppose it also shows us how the stress of American occupation drives a frustrated youth to violence."

Was Mr. Blair being facetious? I don't know. However, I fail to see how the action of the young man in the WAPO story could lead one to conclude that Iraq is "an apparently slap-happy, mom-beating culture."

I'm sure an Iraqi reporter could visit the U.S. and find a similar story. My questions are: Would the reporter be right if he or she called us an apparently slap-happy, mom-beating and mom-killing culture that exploits its women to sell products and whose religious leaders have molested thousands of boys and girls over the years and paid bribes to cover it up, in some instances?

Would it reflect the true American culture if the reporter said thousands of American women and children are murdered and assaulted each year by American males, many of them former soldiers because it's their culture?

I ask these questions because we seem to have a tendency to see ourselves with a holier-than-them attitude, which, in my opinion, produces myopia.

Munir - Those were MY words. Excerpts are indented and grey. Blair's words are linked, there is no excerpt.

And yes, I was being facetious. The point I was attempting to make is, the reporter has no problem spinning American actions in the story to dramatic and negative effect, yet withholds judgment or any drama for the words and deeds of what seems to be a slightly loopy and violent witness. Who smacks his mom. I was mocking the reporter for skipping over the personal traits of the man, imagining that the reporter projected such a common occurrence off on the culture. Sarcasm.

If a reporter was writing a slice of life story about an American who was getting harassed by domestic cops, for example, and that "victim" beat the crap out of his mom during the course of the story, can you really picture that a reporter would portray the interview subject in a sympathetic or neutral light? In what is otherwise a very judmental story?

Only if doing so advances an agenda, I'd imagine, or if the reporter ascribes the behavior to cultural or social phenomena and refuses to judge the behavior of the individual from a standpoint of cultural moral relativism. This isn't reporting, it's storytelling.

I was not really drawing or implying any ridiculous conclusions about Iraqi or Muslim society, just mocking the perceived mindset of a reporter who gave wacky testimony an uncritical treatment.

I suppose it's my fault for being an unclear wiseass in my execution.

This story has all the earmarks of another Janet Cook job. Why do all of these self serving stories come from anonymous sources (OK, she uses a first name, that limits it to about a half a million).

I thought I might send an e-mail to the Post, asking if they verified the source. But then again Ben Bradlee said they had verified the Janet Cook story, and the Washington Post stood by it. We didn't find out until after the Pulitzer prize award, that noone, including Bob Woodward her metro editor had even asked for the source. Of course, no heads rolled here, other than Janet Cook.

Chalk it up to being in the newpaper business too long, this one just smells.

Corky Boyd
Sanibel FL

How ironic. That your first poster stands within a glass house throwing boulders of equivalency. Some one purchase him a dustpan and broom.
It never ceases to amaze me, when you say, or write anything critical involving anything vaguely islamic this is the reaction you always get.
No one has ever said there is not a myriad of problems within our own culture, but you don't usually read or see reports nonchalantly reporting the slapping the crap out of mum either.

I got your point. But if you use too heavy sarcasm it makes it easy for the people with another view point to take it (and you) literaly.

Yeah. Sometimes it just feels good, you know?

Neither of the military spokesmen quoted by the article could confirm that the raid took place, but we don't find that information until 17 paragraphs into the article. And we're supposed to accept the word of a man who can spot Jewish pills on sight? And couldn't find a job for two years? This is a hatchet job.

I thought I would die of embarrassment

warning: for those that are sarcasm/humor-impaired, please don't visit the link.

Sample:

Perhaps no single Iraqi has suffered a greater humiliation at the hands of the US Military than Iqtaab Hassan. As a pudgy, socially inept teenager, Hassan was forced last year to stand helplessly by as US Special Forces searched his bedroom in a middle-class area of Baghdad. What they found would change his life forever.

Rifling through his D&D guidebooks and science fiction action figures, an Army Ranger located a home made videotape. On it: Iqtaab Hassan spastically performing a lightsaber fight from Star Wars.

Hasaan's self-taped performance was never meant for public consumption, but soon it would be spread across US military computer networks, and later the Internet. The incident so traumatized Hassan that it would be an entire week until he could muster the nerve to slap his mother.

The quotation that made me wonder how firmly based in reality his thinking is was, "I have not been able to find a job, although I'm a graduate of the College of Arts."

As if the employers of the world are beating paths to the doors of all the other arts grads.

MUNIR: "I think if we looked closely enough we'll find that many Americans also slap the crap out of their mothers, and even kill them. No one group has a monopoly on bad behavior."

You should get a job in PR, Munir. I'm sure there might be a couple of guys out here in Jesusland who slap their moms around, but I know for sure they wouldn't be casually referring to it when interviewed by the papers. In fact, they wouldn't admit it even if you paid them. Here, this Imaad fella seems to be ok with talking about it to total strangers so they can publish it all around the Jordanian media. Doesn't seem to be a real issue from where he's standing, and in fact he seems to think it will garner him a few extra sympathy points that the Americans made him sooooo mad he just had to slap his mom around. Those dastardly Americans.

Forgive me if I'm not entirely convinced that all cultures are the same, or even equal. To be so, I'd have to be in total denial.

What's really sad is that the reporter seems to think that the reader is going to finish the article and say "Those darned Americans!" when the reaction is likely to be "This guy is a complete loon!"

She obviously doesn't have any respect for her readers.

The only thing Ms. Spinner left out of the story was the guy's name... "Heywood Jablomi".

In defense of cultural relativism, I'd argue that it is like a powerful computer program that a lot of people download and few are capable of using. In the wrong hands, that principle invariably produces a raft of dubious double standards and erroneous equivalencies. The idea that I am trying to promote among my fellow liberals is to disregard the notion of moral equivalency: you must allow yourself to pass judgment according to your moral code, or there can be no grounds for action on any other person's behalf.

Cultural relativism doesn't stand on the absolute equivalency of all actions; it merely requires the observer to consider that different actions have different values within different cultures. Read that again, please. A man who slaps his mother silly is STILL in the wrong, even if he's in Iraq where such behavior may be tolerated. He IS, however, a different kind of wrong than someone from a normal, middle-class background in America who slaps his mother silly. The latter implies more pathology because there is less precedent, and therefore more evidence of individual malice. If I were able to, I'd still be morally required to take action on behalf of this Iraqi's mother, simply because it's wrong to beat people. All that relativism indicates is that while I am passing judgment on the guy, I should consider his motives from several different perspectives (something that I ought to be doing anyway if I'm going to raise a hand against him).

Likewise, there is nothing wrong with regarding our own cultural mores as preferable to theirs. Just bear in mind that discomfort and anger is to be expected from all but the most xenophilic among them; that is to say, many Iraqis who express mistrust and dislike of our forces are motivated by patriotism and national pride. From their standpoints, those statements mean something very different than what they sound like to our ears.

I think that the stumbling block, why people get so committed to equivalency, has to do with the philosophical problem of perception verus will. Nonetheless, that's not an issue for here or probably anywhere, so I shall content myself with having written several paragraphs of complete irrelevant rubbish instead.