I recently found a link from Diane Moon's web site that still has me feeling a little ill. It's a graphic story about a kind of domestic violence that is fairly well known in Pakistan.

This is not a joke. Do not click on this link without bracing yourself for something truly disturbing. You will be looking at a woman who survived being hung upside-down on a rope, beaten with an ax-handle, and then had her eyes gouged out, her ears and nose sliced off, and her tongue cut by her husband. Most chilling is the fact that this sort of thing usually goes completely unpunished in Pakistan, where it happens on a fairly regular basis.

If you're not up for it right now, come back later. But do come back if you can.

This is important not simply because it's another story about the oppression of women in other parts of the world. It's also important because it tells us something about other cultures, and those who would tell us that we have no right to judge other cultures by our own standards. I have a friend who grew up in Middle Class America who hates America and its twisted and evil culture. I doubt reading this would penetrate his skull, but I hope it helps give others some perspective.

The world we are at war in is a different one from ours. A most deadly mistake is to assume that people there are motivated by the same things, think the same basic ways. "The same on the inside" doesn't cut it.

I also await the day when someone runs a photo of Bush or Powell standing and smiling next to the dictator Musharaaf of Pakistan, who is our ally in our war--even though he is a brutal despot ruling over an often cruel and barbaric country. Even though his country has been a haven for terrorist organizations, and still has schools that tech anti-Israel and anti-American hate. I somehow think I will be waiting a while for that photo to be bandied about, but I'm not sure why.

In any case, let's not fool ourselves: we are at war in a part of the world utterly alien from our own in many ways. Comfortable assumptions about how things will or can work are foolish.