Steven Vincent’s latest post from Basra is a must-read: The Naive American.

Vincent and his Iraqi friend Layla interviewed an Air Force captain in charge of allocating building contracts, to find out how he dealt with the universal problems of corruption and graft:

Collecting himself, “But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?” the Captain countered. “I mean, I’ve always believed that we shouldn’t project American values onto other cultures—that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?”

And there it was, the familiar Cultural-Values-Are-Relative argument, surprising though it was to hear it from a military man. But that, too, I realized, was part of American Naivet�: the belief, evidently filtering down from ivy-league academia to Main Street, U.S.A., that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge “the Other;” and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of Empire (cue the Darth Vader theme).

But Layla would have none of it. “No, believe me!” she exclaimed, sitting forward on her stool. “These religious parties are wrong! Look at them, their corruption, their incompetence, their stupidity! Look at the way they treat women! How can you say you cannot judge them? Why shouldn’t you apply your own cultural values?”

It was a moment I wish every muddle-headed college kid and Western-civilization-hating leftist could have witnessed: an Air Force Captain quoting chapter and verse from the new American Gospel of Multiculturalism, only to have a flesh and blood representative of “the Other” declare that he was incorrect, that discriminations and judgment between cultures are possible—necessary—especially when it comes to the absolutely unacceptable way Middle Eastern Arabs treat women.