Rand Abdel-Qader was 17 when she died in March, stomped on, suffocated, and stabbed by her own father while her brothers held her down. Her uncles spat on her body.

The teenager had been studying English at Basra University in southern Iraq and volunteering with a program to help displaced families. There she met a 22-year-old British soldier and developed a crush. The two weren’t lovers—not even friends. They talked only four times, never in private, and she hadn’t seen him since January. But a family friend told Rand’s father that his daughter had been spotted speaking to a foreigner. He killed her that same day.

After the murder, Abdel-Qader Ali was arrested, only to be released two hours later. Honor killings aren’t uncommon in Basra: there were 47 last year and have been more than 30 since January. Ali told The Guardian that at the police station “The officers were by my side during all the time I was there, congratulating me on what I had done.”

“People from Western countries might be shocked, but our girls are not like their daughters,” he went on. “I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did.”

He’s right about Western shock—at the killing but also, in certain circles, at the revelation that Mr. Ali doesn’t want to be just like us.

When those slippery WMD failed to turn up and the war’s rationale shifted from security to freedom-izing, anyone who suggested Iraq might not be hospitable to Western democracy was accused of bigotry. “Condescending,” Condoleezza Rice said. “Presumptuous and insulting,” President Bush added. “The idea that Arabs are not fit for or inclined toward freedom—the underlying assumption of those who denounced, ridiculed and otherwise opposed the democracy project—is wrong, ” Charles Krauthammer piled on. “Embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly wrong.” He generously allows that history will “yield a verdict on the final outcome.”

It is. Five years later, doubts about the universal portability of the American system look far more realistic than racist—with Rand Abdel-Qader’s hasty grave as witness. Only a highly evolved fantasist can still believe Iraqis are scurrying to adopt our values when a father would kill his only daughter simply for speaking to one of us.