Reuel Marc Gerecht, on the decisions being weighed for post-Saddam Iraq, expresses what he sees as a policy retreat:

The Bush administration's embrace of odd, counterproductive notions is nowhere more evident than in its energetic pursuit of foreign Muslim troops for Iraq. The reasoning for these deployments - which probably won't happen unless the United States gets the consent of the French, Germans, and Russians at the U.N. - apparently is that Iraqi Muslims would respect foreign Muslim troops more than they respect American soldiers. Leaving aside why in the world the Bush administration would want to deploy Muslim soldiers from nondemocratic countries to Iraq, the Muslim-likes-Muslim sentiment behind this argument is a myth. Middle Eastern history teaches the opposite. Since the dawn of the 19th century Muslim states have shown much greater confidence in the professionalism of Western soldiers than of fellow Muslims. Rulers and intellectuals may say nasty things about Westerners publicly, but privately they have consistently shown that they feel safer with infidels than they do with their own. After the first Gulf War, the Persian Gulf states made a big show of wanting the Egyptians and the Syrians, not the Americans, to assume the responsibility for their security. No Egyptian or Syrian soldier ever landed. The sheikhs and the intellectuals may hate us in their hearts; but they absolutely don't want to entrust their property, wives, and daughters to foreign Arab Muslims.

Emphasis is mine for the question I've been asking since the apparent White House reversal hit the news and people started chattering about "Muslim faces on the ground." Irrespective of the gap in equipment and professionalism between top-notch Anglo-Americans and Near Easterners, every nation bordering Iraq is not only opposed to the country's present course towards self-government but eager to carve it up into blocks of arable land and oil fields, too. And with Iraqi civilians topping the casualty lists for recent bombing attacks, no one can claim that insurgents discriminate West from East in their killings.

Gerecht's article tackles several more matters on Iraq's early reconstruction - a great read.

ALSO: Max Singer underscores the growing belief among even the most progressive that the situation in Iraq - because it is obviously a combination of reconstruction and combat - has come to a crossroads. Several strategic offensive options are available to the adminstration, and it's still a question as to how many the White House will embrace as policy. Serious as Singer's delivery is, he knows the score:

The danger in Iraq does not imply that it was a mistake for the U.S. to remove Saddam. There was no possibility of the U.S. inducing Arab governments to act strongly against terrorist organizations had Saddam been left in power.

The U.S. response to the danger of militant Islam must have three parts. First, defensive measures against terrorism in the U.S. Second, eliminating safe havens for terrorist organizations abroad — which means primarily inducing Muslim governments to stop harboring terrorist organizations and demonstrating U.S. willingness to use power. Third, a long-term effort to help moderate Muslims reduce the influence of militant Islam among Muslims generally.

In other words, rejection of Islamofascists through the power of liberty can be achieved, so Allied forces can't lose their momentum.