Results Will Vary

Our logic is not always theirs:

Most governments declare, as policy, that they will not negotiate with terrorists. But this leading faction of Algeria’s military, driven to anti-compromise zealotry by the civil war, seems to mean it in a way that few others do. The audacious assault that may have killed several hostages shocked Western governments. But in the logic of the Algerian civil war, which ended 13 years ago everywhere but in the minds of the Algerian generals and Islamists who squared off this week in the remote Saharan desert, this was just another skirmish.