One Day After Charlie Hebdo ‘Rationale’ Comments, Kerry Says Terror Attacks ‘Can Never be Rationalized’
(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that terrorist attacks “can never be rationalized, and we can never allow them to be rationalized” – one day after saying there was a “rationale that you could attach yourself to [1]” behind last January’s terrorist attack against staff of a magazine known for mocking Islam.
Kerry’s comments in Paris contrasting last week’s terror attacks to the earlier one targeting Charlie Hebdo were widely criticized, and back home Wednesday he appeared to walk them back – although without referring directly to his earlier words.
“Let me make my point as clearly as I can,” he said during remarks at an Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) briefing at the State Department. “There are no grounds of history, religion, ideology, psychology, politics, economic disadvantage, or personal ambition, that justify the slaughter of unarmed civilians, the bombing of public places, or indiscriminate violence towards innocent men, women, and children.”
“And such atrocities can never be rationalized, and we can never allow them to be rationalized, “ Kerry added. “There’s no excuse. They have to be stopped.”
Kerry also spoke about the atrocities being carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“They kill Yezidis because they are Yezidis. They kill Christians because they are Christians. They kill Shia because they are Shia,” he said.
“And people need to understand this: There is no negotiation. There’s nothing to negotiate when you license rape as a form of daily life and call it the will of God. Show me a religion anywhere, including Islam, which teaches that. This is a complete aberration.”
ISIS claimed responsibility for coordinated gun and bomb attacks in Paris last Friday that cost 129 lives.
Last January, in an attack claimed by al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly long criticized by Muslims for its handling of Islam and publication of cartoons lampooning Mohammed. In a linked attack, four Jews were killed at a kosher supermarket. In the aftermath of those attacks, President Obama drew criticism for not joining more than 40 world leaders who gathered with huge numbers of French citizens at solidarity rallies.
Kerry said Tuesday [1] that last week’s terror attacks were “absolutely indiscriminate,” while in the case of the Charlie Hebdo attack “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.’”
The comments were widely panned [2] on social media, and Republican presidential candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie advised the secretary of state to “get some sleep and shut up [3].”
Asked during his daily briefing Wednesday about the criticism of Kerry’s remarks in Paris State Department spokesman John Kirby pointed to his latest comments at OSAC.
“He was very, very eloquent and very clear today about the fact that there’s no rationale for this kind of violence.”
Of Kerry’s words in Paris on Tuesday, Kirby said, “all he was simply doing was proffering forth the rationale used by the terrorists in their attempt to justify it and reflecting, I think, the notion that in the Hebdo attack – not that it’s justified, but that they justified it based on a certain act by publishers.”
“Whereas, the attacks in Paris in just the last few days were not – there was no rationale provided by ISIL for them other than the fact that they’re just brutal murderers and indiscriminate killers,” Kirby added.
Source URL:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/one-day-after-charlie-hebdo-rationale-comment-kerry-says-terror 
