Secretary of State John Kerry said last week’s terror attacks in Paris lacked the "rationale" of the assault earlier this year on the staff of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, comments that drew immediate criticism from conservatives.
“There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that," Kerry told embassy staff and their families Tuesday in Paris, according to a transcript posted by the State Department.
"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, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that.”
Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen claimed credit for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo, which left 12 staff members dead. The terror group said it was in retaliation for the magazine’s decision to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, among other justifications. Visual depictions of Muhammad are seen as by many Muslims as sacrilegious.
While millions of French people marched in January to protest the attacks and show national unity, there were debates in the country about whether Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons mocking Islam went too far.
Kerry said Friday’s attacks across Paris, which killed at least 129 people at a soccer stadium, concert venue, and restaurants, were “absolutely indiscriminate” and not intended to “aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.”
The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication in the U.S., headlined the remarks as “John Kerry Justifies Charlie Hebdo Slaughter.” Another, The Federalist, said in its headline that Kerry was saying the satirical publication “Kind of Asked for It You Know.”