Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt explain two major terrorist events in Paris this year did not go over well with conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer.
Kerry said Tuesday that the Islamic terrorists who killed 12 people in January at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo at least had a reason for what they did, while the attackers who killed 129 civilians in Paris last week appeared to have murdered at random.
Krauthammer and National Journal reporter Ron Fournier were not at all impressed by Kerry’s comments.
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“If a gaffe is when a politician speaks the truth, what’s really on his mind, when Kerry said legitimacy, it told us a lot about him and the president,” Krauthammer said Tuesday on Fox News. “A president who said at the U.N. the future does not belong to those who insult the prophet, they think deep down, that the murder of cartoonist has kind of legitimacy because it transgressed religious sensibility. That’s appalling coming out of the secretary of state and by consensus, this administration.”
Seeking to comfort the families of the victims from last week’s terrorist attack in Paris, Kerry said, “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of, not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
“This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for. That’s not an exaggeration. It was to assault all sense of nationhood and nation-state and rule of law and decency, dignity, and just put fear into the community and say, ‘Here we are.’ And for what? What’s the platform? What’s the grievance? That we’re not who they are?” he added.
There was a moment during his apparently unscripted remarks when Kerry appeared to realize that he seemingly legitimized the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but he continued on regardless.
“They kill people because of who they are and they kill people because of what they believe. And it’s indiscriminate. They kill Shia. They kill Yezidis. They kill Christians. They kill Druze. They kill Ismaili. They kill anybody who isn’t them and doesn’t pledge to be that,” he said.
Fournier was also critical of the secretary of state.
“The word legitimacy came out of the secretary of state’s mouth talking about terrorism, and obviously that’s he was thinking as well. That’s inexplicably irresponsible,” he said.
Charlie Hebdo was attacked and many of its staff murdered because it refused to stop satirizing Islam and Muhammed.
(h/t WFB)
