"It's a big mess in Iraq today. You can't leave a country with no leaders, no police."

The 30-year-old could be any voice on the so-called "Arab Street," -- a shorthand term for Arab public opinion -- but in fact, this Syrian native has lived in the United States for the past 13 years.

Helping her young son into her minivan in a parking lot in this predominantly Arab suburb of Detroit, Al-Ask strives to articulate her mixed feelings over the toppling of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

"We don't hate Americans. We live here. We feel like we're part of American society," she says, "but we all know there's something more to it than what (US President) George Bush and (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair are saying."

In common with many other sceptics, Al-Ask suspects oil and Israeli security had more to do with the genesis of Gulf War II, as it is being called, than any desire on the part of the Americans to liberate the Iraqi people.

The fact that the conflict removed a regime widely regarded as repressive, complicates things, she concedes. "I don't know what the solution is. It's confusing."

Across town at the offices of the Arab American News, editor Osama Siblani is not confused so much as outraged -- outraged at the deaths of Iraqi civilians and what he views as the United States' disregard for international law and national sovereignty.

Those sentiments are reflected in the pages of his weekly free sheet: "Cluster bombs rained on Babylon," "Maternity hospital damaged in hit," "History lessons unlearned."

Taking time out from a busy round of interviews and lectures, (the next with Qatar's Al-Jazeera network) Siblani explains his position.

"There will be no democracy in Iraq," he predicts, adding that the administration "doesn't even care," what becomes of the country now.

"We have a person in power who is obsessed with the removal of Saddam Hussein, and an administration that is controlled by special interest groups," he said.

The United States will not be able to control the ethnic and religious tensions between the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in the absence of Saddam Hussein's "iron fist," he concludes.

Expectations are high, both among the coalition's supporters and their critics, notes Yahya Basha, chairman of the American Muslim Council.

A moderate among the ranks of Muslim-American leaders, Basha acknowledges that "most of the community suspects the United States will be an occupier," rather than a liberator.

For his part, the Syrian-born doctor prefers to take what he sees as a more constructive approach.

"The community should be asking the administration to fulfill their promises," he says. "They have the resources and the energy to focus on it and make it happen."

The Iraqi question may be all-consuming for the first-generation Arabs who make up a good portion of the 300,000 or so Arabs who live in Dearborn -- home to the largest concentration of Arabs in the United States.

But the intricacies of American foreign policy couldn't be more arcane to a generation of Arabs who grew up here, nurtured on cable television, cell phones and sport-utility vehicles.

Sam Hassan, a 33-year-old teacher at a local middle school, can't say he's noticed any "sense of mistrust," among Arab-Americans.

Only "time will tell," whether the war was the right course of action, says this Lebanese-American. "I want to say yes," he says. "I was born and raised here. I'm a proud American."

SPACE.WIRE