BELGRAVIA DISPATCH is admonishing Josh Marshall for letting his hostility toward Richard Perle get the best of him. And this seems about right:

[W]hat Marshall misses is that Arabs and Muslims, while often deeply humiliated, resentful and suspicious with respect to U.S. policy and motives in the region–are also fascinated, curious and eager to see how Bush’s huge Iraq gamble develops in the coming months.

Put differently, they are intrigued to see if a democratic, unitary Iraqi state can rise from the ashes of Saddam’s Iraq. The democracy exception policy, at least with regard to Iraq, just took a body blow.

And many Arabs/Muslims are busily digesting this complex reality–and waiting to see how the Iraq project proceeds–without yet having formed a definitive view.

This, at least partially, explains why American favorability rankings in the Muslim world have actually improved since the Iraq invasion per the Pew poll.

That seems right to me. (Emphasis in original). Note, too, Iraqi bloggers’ war-anniversary sumups (linked here and here), and Adam Curry’s firsthand observations on what’s going on in Iraq.