Nothing wrong with judging. I judge states that "circumsize" women or kill people for walking on the street with the "wrong" dress code to be wrong, and often to be evil.
The subtelty is to judge that while not assuming that everyone in that state is a perpetrator, recognizing that as abhorrent as something is there may be some historical background to understand about it if you want to eradicate it, and realizing that taking action may have unforeseen circumstances.
To go further, the lack of judging advocated in the last 20-30 years by some schools of thought would seem to further evil in the world. I've read transcripts of American students actually saying things like "We can't judge an Indian culture for brutally killing the wife after the husband dies. It's how their culture works, after all, and morality is relative to culture."
Yes!
I'm so sick of hearing this relative morality crap. The fact that a culture does not see something as wrong does not necessarily make it right, or acceptable.
Slavery was practiced throughout the world for thousands of years, and in places still is. In civilized society it has come to an end, basically because people stood up and said it was wrong to enslave another human being. Ironically the recent conference on "racism" in Durban was really just a stomping ground for people to blame the West for slavery--as if they invented it--and to jump all over Israel. Most of those nations demanding reparations from the US and other European countries (the countries that led the anti-slavery movement) were complicit in the slave trade themselves, and some still are. Point is, slavery is wrong.
Likewise your point on female genital mutilation is one I've been known to bring up when it comes to this relative morality thing. Countries that practice this don't do it for religious reasons (though they say otherwise), but because they oppress women. It's interesting that there's nothing in the Quran to dictate such a practice, but so-called fundamentalists do this anyway. (Incidentally, why do we call extremists "fundamentalists"? A true fundamentalist is someone who just wants to get back to basics and abandon dogma, i.e. a non-extremist. Anyone else see a semantic problem with that?)
Torture is still commonplace in many parts of the world. Somebody try to defend that in the name of relative morality.
This is not to say that nobody should do things differently than anyone else, or that we shouldn't tolerate worldviews even massively different from our own. But some things are just wrong all over and it's not bad to say so.
Lummox JR
If that's what you think I'm doing, I'll give up on having any sort of conversation with you. My point is that a lot of Americans are taking the stance that we should carpet bomb Afghanistan. I'm not saying this is the official response. I'm not saying anyone with a microphone or consultancy job is espousing this view. I'm not saying any policy makers are weighing this as an option. I am talking about people. People that I work with. People that I pass on the street. People who apparently don't get a very good view of me from behind and yell "Towelhead!" as they pass me in their cars (I wear a lot of hats).
Basically, my point is that your point is pointless. Yes, it is just the "man on the street" who is saying such things...but that "man on the street" is America in a way that CNN isn't.