Half Full, Half Empty

One of the upsides of the end of President Obama's term will probably be the exit of Secretary of State John Kerry from the public stage. Kerry, whose visit to France following the deadly terrorist attacks on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo featured James Taylor singing to the French people that they had a friend, spoke in Paris about last Friday's terror attacks on several locations.

Among the many words he managed to emit during his remarks were these: "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" in reference to the Hebdo attacks.

Now, what Secretary Kerry probably meant was that while the people who shot up a magazine office at least claimed they'd been pushed to it by the magazine's continued insults of their religion, the attackers Friday didn't even offer that kind of rationale. He may have meant that this attack hurts more because it's even more senseless than the previous attack, but he phrased it poorly.

However, shouldn't a diplomat with a long history of service in legislative work with other nations have enough of a clue to elide that sentence right out of his remarks, even if he's only talking to the staff at his own embassy in a city that's still mourning its dead? Shouldn't he know that trying to make that kind of comparison has no good side? Shouldn't he bloody well read his own blankety-blank speech to see what's in it before he says it out loud?

I've said it before -- whatever shortfalls George W. Bush had as a conservative and a president, I regret my 2004 vote for him less and less every time Secretary Kerry opens his mouth.

Still a long way to go, though.