These are some of the friends who need our help and who are ready to fight the jihadis for control of their society:
An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early on Saturday in a surge of protest against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya more than a year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia said the group had evacuated its bases in Benghazi "to preserve security in the city".
In a dramatic sign of Libya's fragility, after sweeping through the base the crowd went on to attack a pro-government militia, believing them to be Islamists, triggering an armed response in which at least 11 people were killed and more than 60 wounded.
Clearly they need our help to identify targets. And they clearly deserve our help.
And this isn't some Responsibility to Protect nonsense. This is in our national interests. President Obama likes to say that war is receding and will end in 2014. He is wrong (I know, how shocking). If we are lucky, our large military component aspect of the Long War is receding. But if we fail to fight the war in the hearts and minds of Arab society to help those Moslems willing to reject Islamists and fight them, we just guarantee that in a decade or so we'll be back to the large military component again.
And the next time our jihadi enemies might have chemical weapons or worse.
We can pretend that war is receding. But don't pretend you are part of the "reality-based community" if you do that. War will find us if we don't fight and win the war we are in.
Work the problems.
UPDATE: Don't abandon people who want to reform Islam (tip to Mad Minerva).
