RALPH PETERS:

AL Qaeda and its affiliates are losing. They'll do their utmost to strike the United States before our elections. But even if they succeed, the effect will be the opposite of what they hope. And it won't change the fact that the terrorist beast is badly wounded.

The recent wave of arrests, from Pakistan through the Middle East to Britain, stunned the terrorists and sent them crawling for ever-deeper cover. The blow against terror has been so indisputable that even our embrace-the-terrorists-with-understanding crowd stopped crying that the War on Terror's a failure (note the shift in campaign rhetoric).

But it's also a fact that this struggle is far from over. It will take at least a full generation — perhaps much longer — to rid the world of the demons who have appointed themselves as Allah's executioners.

We do have some unexpected allies in this war, though: the terrorists themselves.

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