CAMPAIGN OF TRUTH WILL CONQUER HATE.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

THE incessant refrain from those who seek to undermine America's war effort by rationalizing terror is, ``Why do they hate us so much?''

An answer to that question is one that those who ask it tend to overlook: ``They'' - millions of ordinary people throughout the Arab world - have long been force-fed a diet of deceitful rhetoric and hateful theology.

The latest in a long line of conspiracy theories to grip much of the Muslim world shows just how insidious - and pervasive - radical Islamic propaganda has become.

The theory holds that it wasn't Osama bin Laden who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, it was the Jews. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, orchestrated the assaults, then pinned the blame on Muslims as part of an elaborate scheme to get America to fight Israel's battles.

The ``evidence'' for this widely circulated view is a rumor that, on the day before the attacks, Israeli intelligence warned 4,000 American Jews working in the World Trade Center not to go to work. Missing from the story are the contradictory facts that the list of victims includes many Jewish names, that more than 130 Israeli nationals perished in the attacks and that the hijackers were all Arabs.

Nonsense travels far when it's the only word in town.

In nondemocratic countries, where ``free press'' is essentially an oxymoron and sources of true information are scarce, ordinary people have little choice but to believe whatever official sources dictate. The idea that Sept. 11 was nothing more than a vast Jewish conspiracy has been reported not only on Taliban radio, but even in more moderate parts of the Middle East. It has been preached in Egyptian mosques and taught in government-funded Islamic schools in Pakistan.

That's a big part of why ``they'' hate us so much. Too often, they know no better.

They'll continue to hate us for a long time to come, unless America disabuses them of the lies and distortions. Winning the war on terror will require waging an enduring campaign of truth consisting of three components: providing alternative sources of information, displacing radical Islam and discrediting the Middle East's corrupt authorities.

As for the first component, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, has proposed a key part of the solution: Radio Free Afghanistan. A member of the House International Relations Committee, Royce has sponsored a $14 million bill that would pay for a radio transmitter and provide the country with 12 hours of daily broadcasts in local languages - six hours in Pashto and six hours in Dari. The bill has bipartisan support, including the co-sponsorship of Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills.

``We need to use our fighter planes to take out (Taliban) broadcasting stations,'' Royce recently told a Washington audience, ``and then we need to go up on the air.''

Radio Free Afghanistan has been tried before - it piped in the voice of freedom during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. And, of course, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were important sources of truth and encouragement to the Eastern Bloc throughout the Cold War.

The second component of a campaign of truth - displacing radical Islam in the hearts and minds of millions of ordinary Muslims - is not as easy, and it's beyond the scope of the U.S. government. It's primarily the responsibility of the world's peaceful and moderate Muslims.

It's heartening, but inadequate, to hear Muslims in America and abroad denounce bin Laden and fellow terrorists. Surely they have an obligation, in the interest of protecting their faith, to declare radical Muslims nothing less than idolaters destined for damnation. They must declare their own holy war of apologetics, throughout mosques and Muslim universities everywhere, to purge their faith of the radical cancer.

Anything less would cast in doubt the sincerity of their professed outrage - and leave much of the world beholden to a cultish ideology that's inimically at odds with civilization.

But the third, and ultimately most important, component of the campaign of truth - discrediting vile local authorities - will be the job of the U.S. military. Just as World War II put an end to Nazism, and the end of the U.S.S.R. made unbelievers out of former Communists, defeating the region's hate-mongers will expose the fraudulence of radical Islam's claims that God is on its side and that its victory is predestined.

When their propaganda has been countered, their corrupted theology has been replaced and their deceitful leaders have been toppled, ``they'' won't hate us any more.

They'll be grateful.