LONDON Tunisia is one of those good news/bad news stories for US foreign policy.

On the face of it, it’s great.    Young, educated people, rising up against a long-entrenched authoritarian ruler.   Demanding a more fair economy and a more transparent democracy.  For the most part, until threatened, doing it in a peaceful manner.

Remarkably against all odds and a hardened notorious security apparatus, doing it : toppling the government.

It’s the kind of Arab uprising against oppressive regimes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was just talking about on her Mideast tour this week.

There wouldn’t seem to be any love-lost between Tunis and D.C. As spelled out in one recently-released WikiLeak, a US diplomat in 2009 dismissed the Tunisian government as a mafia-like “corrupt” “Family” losing the support of the people.

The hitch is, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali might have been a bastard, but he was OUR bastard.   He was moderate, pro-Western, pro-capitalist, pro-United States.   Though he professed fealty to the Palestinian cause, he served as a go-between in Mideast peace efforts.

More importantly, he was a bulwark against Al Qaeda expansion especially regarding a particularly virulent regional chapter of the group Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (North Africa).   He threw his well-trained and equipped military against the bad guys.

And his tight control of media and public expression the country  meant the Islamists had little room to maneuver.

No wonder, some noted, by Thursday a spokesman for the group was allegedly declaring its support for and assistance to the protestors against the secular government it hated.

Still, as I’m sure President Obama was thinking when he issued his warm and hopeful statement about the future of the country post-Ben Ali’s unceremonious departure, this is not to say a new, truly democratically-elected and transparent Tunisian government can’t also be a good friend of the US and a foe of Islamic extremism.

And most importantly if the public institutions and maybe more importantly, the economy is open to the people, Tunisia might serve as a model for other countries in the Arab and Mideast world who are now more into oppression and suppression than allowing proper societies to develop.

Surely jobs and schools and free speech are America’s and the international community’s best weapons against closed-minded religious radicals and terror.  And a good thing for the people in the region.