David Ignatius on deliberations within the U.S. intelligence community on talking to groups that lots of people love to hate

Ignatius captures a debate that has gathered momentum within official policy circles. The reality is that as much as special interest advocates would like to dismiss groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas as simply terrorist groups, these groups have significant and sometimes impressively broad and diverse constituencies. In both Palestine and Lebanon the Islamists are a big part of the political landscape and to pretend that they may be excluded from politics or that the issues that they espouse may be ignored is no very smart.