Lost?

US terrorism specialists Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing...

America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world could take more than a generation to set right, they say, and Bush's mounting political woes at home have undermined the chance for any bold US initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism...

''We may be attacked by terrorists who receive their training in Iraq or attacked by terrorists who were inspired, organized, and trained by people who were in Iraq," said Simon, a Rand Corp. analyst who teaches at Georgetown University.

Bush ''has given them an excellent American target in Iraq but in the process has energized the jihad and given militants the kind of urban warfare experience that will raise the future threat to the United States exponentially."

For Benjamin and Simon, the war on terrorism has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and failed to counter a deadly global movement responsible for attacks in London; Madrid; Bali, Indonesia; and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

And not even Osama bin Laden, they say, could have dreamed the United States would stumble so badly in the court of Muslim public opinion.

''Everyone says there's a war of ideas out there, and I agree. The sad fact is that we're on the wrong side," said Benjamin, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington....