Part of me wants to feel good about the meeting of Tony Blair and Muammar Gaddafi.

And part of me is screaming, “MY GOD! That’s Muammar Gaddafi! What the hell are you doing?”

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Britain’s Tony Blair sealed Libya’s return to the world community with a historic handshake with Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday and an agreement to fight al Qaeda together.

After more than an hour of talks, the prime minister said Libya’s rejection of banned weapons and rapprochement with the West could act as a template for other Arab nations to turn their back on Islamic extremism.

“We are showing by our engagement with Libya today that it is possible for countries in the Arab world to work with the United States and the UK to defeat the common enemy of extremist fanatical terrorism driven by al Qaeda,” he told reporters.

“It is a very, very important signal for the whole of the Arab world.”

On the first visit to Libya by a British leader since 1943, Blair was whisked to a ceremonial tent outside Tripoli to meet Gaddafi, once condemned by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan as the “mad dog of the Middle East.”

There, the pair symbolically shook hands for the cameras before vowing to work together to oppose militant Islamism.

“You are looking good, you are still young,” Gaddafi told Blair, 50, speaking in English.

I hope this overreach by Tony Blair (and by President Bush) doesn’t have unintended consequences. Libya is already reaping the rewards of their uncharacteristic (for Arabs) ability to make real compromises. Gaddafi might be seen in the Arab world as offering his neck to the Zionist/American Satan, triggering an honor/shame reaction that could bring him down—even as the very real benefits of his compromise begin to lift Libya out of the Dark Ages.