Yes, is this the president? Oh, thank goodness I’ve been able to reach you, Mr. President … yes, we’ve got a major crisis on our hands … no, not the Iranians or the North Koreans … no, not the Chinese either … it’s Cuba, sir … not Castro, it’s about our people actually … they’ve … I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to say this … they’ve flushed a book down the toilet.”

A parody of a dramatic scene such as the one above is the best way I’ve found to express the absurdity of the ongoing media circus surrounding the “Quran abuse” at Guantanamo Bay. I find it even more ridiculous than the spectacle of the Michael Jackson trial, which at least involves a serious charge.

It all started with a Newsweek blurb alleging that the guards at Guantanamo had subjected the Muslim holy book to — gasp — a swirly.

This was followed by protests and rioting across the Middle East which resulted in the deaths of at least 17 people — deaths the White House blamed on the Newsweek editors, who promptly retracted the story — and a firestorm of public debate and freshly launched investigations.

On Friday, U.S. military officials released their first findings, indicating no swirly, but perhaps only a stomping and some profane scribbling.

The “Quran abuse” situation is a symptom of the growing acceptance of cultural relativism, the idea that all cultures must be treated with equal respect and are therefore off limits to criticism. This idea is the premise behind the question, “Who are we to judge?”

This is a question that has been asked frequently for so long that it is now possible for Amnesty International to grotesquely equate Guantanamo Bay to a Soviet gulag, for ABC News to write in all seriousness that “In another confirmed incident, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet,” and for people to look upon the Muslim hysteria surrounding “Quran abuse” as even remotely rational or legitimate.

Instead of acting like reasonable adults more or less confident in reason and common sense, the best defense the military investigators could render was not a “grow up” but instead the classic childish tactic for shifting blame: “Well, they did it, too!”

The “investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans,” according to the reports. I would suggest that the military has vastly more important things to do than search through “thousands of pages of written records” for this information, but then again, who am I to judge?

One interesting and unfortunate irony in all this is that the terrorists understand this weakness and uncertainty much better than most of the Western world. The fact that U.S. military leaders have been limited from leading an effective war on terror by having to perpetually defend themselves against such charges as “Quran abuse” has not been lost on al-Qaida, for example.

A recently discovered training manual directs captured operatives to pursue the mission of “spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy” by complaining “of mistreatment while in prison,” regardless of the truth.

If al-Qaida understands how gullible the Western world has become, then why can’t we? It probably has something to do with the fact that we’ve convinced ourselves of the idea, for example, that a book can be abused and that if people get mad about it, we should at least give them the benefit of doubt, if not an apology.

The solution is simple: If we can learn something like this, we can unlearn it, too. Guantanamo Bay seems like the place to start.