Relative Victory is a distinctly American concept.

That’s not to say global lexicons and maxim tomes ignore the grey areas of success and failure. They just tend to lean more toward the pessimistic. In bowls across the planet, there’s a discoloration in an otherwise tasty lobster bisque that, despite how delicious the stock, will be returned and replaced with a gazpacho. They have the Pyrrhic Victory, one in which the success is marred by terrible losses. We have the Relative Victory, determined to clutch any degree of positivity from the foamy jaws of defeat. This is one of the many reasons Why The Terrorists Hate Us.

Another reason is our attempt to foist upon them our various secular tropes and standards such as democracy, the comforts of running water, and not putting a rock through a woman’s head at the beck and call of her husband who thought the couscous was a little dry. Also on this list: relativity.

As crazy as the fundamentalists can be, we are equally crazy for assuming the enemy thinks the same way we do. Part of the definition of any radical belief structure, be it in Islam, Christianity, or Bieber-Mania, is the paucity of relativity. It’s a dirty word in the black-and-white worlds of Heaven and Hell, Mujahideen and Infidel, and Bangs and Tousling. Al Qaeda doesn’t and has never wanted a truce, a compromise, a relative victory, which is why peace between the Israelis and Palestinians isn’t going to work unless the Israelis relocate to Boca, and even that might be a little close for the zero-sum Hamas. We shake hands at the end of Little League baseball games, give out Eighth Place Ribbons, and thusly can’t figure out why the Jihadists wouldn’t be happy with a half measure.

The fear over the “Ground Zero Mosque” is another example of our society forgetting that theirs is different.

The rallies and protests led primarily by conservatives are shaking in their pennyloafers that allowing a Muslim place of worship to be built near the location where 2,700 Americans died in the name of Islam means ‘the terrorists win.’ An equal number of counter-protests are defending the construction as a ‘bridge between the cultures,’ an olive branch of sorts, proving an attempt to reach out to the Islamic population.

Once again, no one gets it.

On one side of the picket line, we have the Conservative jingoists who think the memory of loved ones lost is tarnished by the presence of a Mosque, which is like throwing bricks through the windows of a Sooners bar because Timothy McVeigh rooted for OU. On the other side, the Liberal moralists are trying to bully the opposition by classifying even the mentioning of Islam as a racist attack, thinking the less we ‘hate’ them, the less they’ll hate us.

Newsflash to both sides: if there’s a Mosque near Ground Zero, the terrorists will not think they’ve won. If there isn’t a Mosque near Ground Zero, the terrorists won’t think we’re avoiding diplomacy.

They don’t give a grain of a damn.

The greatest problem with our approach to the Middle East is that both the Republicans and Democrats think Al Qaeda thinks the way they do. Viral fear runs rampant through both organizations that the others’ actions will result in another attempted terrorist attack. What they don’t understand is that they don’t understand, that there will be another attempted terrorist attack as long as Al Qaeda and McDonalds are around. The inevitability of such an event is even more dangerous because both parties will be convinced the other was to blame. It’s like an ancient civilization in the Puget Sound watershed, with rival chieftains threatening acts of war if the other brings about the Rain Gods. It’s going to rain in Seattle, regardless of how many virgins get tossed off the Space Needle (perhaps the time frame of this analogy is a bit wide).

Al Qaeda and all of its little offshoots are shockingly simple and the sooner we come to that conclusion, the sooner we can join together to fight against them.

Because the fact remains that if there’s a Mosque in New York City, Al Qaeda will try to blow that up too.

Because it’s ours.

Just like Relative Victory.