Dictator's ouster fails to halt terrorist threat

Going to war is one thing. Fighting terror is another.

03/21/04: (Toronto Star) -- So far — says a leader of Canada's more than half-a-million Arabs — the United States has done the first badly, while failing dismally at the second.

By invading Iraq a year ago, says Raja Khouri, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, Washington undoubtedly had itself a war. But he believes the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has done little, if anything, to combat the worldwide threat posed by Muslim extremists bent on inflicting death and mayhem.

In fact, he says, U.S. belligerence has only made that threat more potent.

"You can't fight an idea by invading countries," he says. "To fight an idea, you have to discredit the idea. Instead of doing that, the United States is doing the exact opposite. Instead of proving the West is not out to get the Muslim world, it went out and invaded a Muslim country."

If many Arabs were hostile to the West before, he says, the invasion of Iraq has done nothing to change their minds. Instead, it has swelled their numbers — playing straight into the hands of terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. He says the result is apparent already.

"The `war on terror' has failed miserably," he says. "This will do more to help the radicals of the world to substantiate their claims that the West is out to get Arabs and Muslims and to control them. We've had a number of terrorist attacks, and the invasion of Iraq has not done anything to diminish them."

Meanwhile, he says, the war's effects on Iraq itself have been disastrous. The country is now a shambles in every sense — politically, economically, physically. Almost every passing day brings more news of bombings or assassinations.

"There was no terrorism in Iraq before the war," he says. "Now there is. You have to be blind not to see that the occupation of Iraq is turning into a fiasco."

Based in Toronto, the Canadian Arab Federation lobbies on behalf of Canada's nearly 600,000 Arabs, roughly half of whom are Muslim and the rest Christian.

"It is a very diverse group, from 22 different countries," he says.

A Christian himself, Khouri was born in Lebanon and later immigrated to Canada. His wife is Muslim.

Like many Arabs, Khouri says he opposed both Saddam and his iron-fisted rule, but he does not see how the U.S. occupation of Iraq will improve matters in that country.

"We very much support and encourage democracy," he says, "but certainly not at the point of the gun. U.S. policy in Iraq has been completely incompetent from day one."

During the 12 months that have passed since the invasion, he says, Washington's true motives for intervening have gradually revealed themselves more clearly.

"The war was based on lies," he says. "The notion that it had to do with the war on terror is slowly falling apart."

If the United States truly wanted to combat terror, he says, it would have capitalized on the widespread sympathy the country enjoyed around the world, and specifically among Arab societies, immediately following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

"But that was all squandered by the invasion of Iraq. Today, the anti-American sentiment is very high, not just in the Arab world but everywhere."

In Khouri's view, Washington invaded Iraq, with the support of Britain and several other governments, not so much to counter terrorism as to install a "friendly regime" and to gain access to Iraq's natural resources, especially its oil.

"I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq, and I'm more so today," he says. 

"It has proven to be everything we thought it would be and more."

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers