An American Secretary of State addressing American Embassy employees spoke of the “legitimacy” of the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo, before realizing how outrageous that was and correcting himself to speak of a “rationale.” Too late and still awful.  By expressing his understanding of, if not agreement with, the right of Muslims to murder those who violate their Sharia code while freely expressing themselves in the tradition of the West, Kerry has forfeited his ability to act as defender of American interests on the world stage. He should resign or be fired.

But of course Barack Obama, who stated on the world stage at the UN that “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” may well agree with Kerry’s sentiments.

Kerry’s full remarks can be read here. The problematic part is:

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, "OK, they're really angry because of this and that." This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn't to aggrieve [sic] one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for.

So far as I can see, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline was the first to apply the label “Freudian slip” to the remarks, He adds:

Kerry’s fall back position — that there was “a rationale you could attach yourself to” for the Charlie Hebdo attack but not the ones last week — fares no better than his original phraseology. Kerry is saying that we (not the murderers whom he distinguishes as “they”) could “attach” ourselves to cartoon drawings as a rationale for murder. But who in his right mind could perform this mental stunt? Okay, who other than Kerry, Obama, and Hillary (a video “offensive” to Islam caused the Benghzai attack) Clinton.

The entire foreign policy team of the United States accepts the Islamist position that we must alter our tradition of freedom of speech to conform to Sharia law’s protection of the preeminence of Islam and its prophet. Has anyone in the Obama administration spoken out against the mockery of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints in the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon?  Mockery of the Mormons’ prophet is perfectly fine, so there is no general principle of respect for religions at play here. It is dhimmitude, plain and simple.

And what of the Jews at the kosher supermarket slaughtered on the same day as the cartoonists? Does Kerry think there was legitimacy or a ration ale for their slaughter? After all, he was comparing the two days of carnage and finding one more understandable than the other. Is he stating that there is a rationale for killing Jews? Or is he in the same camp as Obama, who called them “a bunch of folks at a deli” as if they were random victims like young people at the Bataclan concert venue. If so, did Kerry just forget about them?

Charles Krauthammer and Ron Fournier were appalled by the comments.

It is time to call for Kerry’s resignation. “Legitimacy” (his word) is the key concept here, and he has lost it.