The Right is whining that Key said “If [the Norway massacre] is an act of global terrorism, I think what it shows is no country large or small is immune from that risk and that’s why New Zealand’s played its part in Afghanistan” . ‘IF! Don’t you see, IF!’
Try to get the point, righties.
It’s not that he was wrong about who was behind the attack (although the kneejerk assumption that is must have been muslims from him and others is terrible). Not his language was conditional. Even if he had been right. Even the attack was Al Qaeda. Key would have been out of line and opportunistic.
He took this tragedy. Immediately tried to frame it in terms that served his domestic political purposes.
He tried to tell us what happened in Norway justified us being in Afghanistan. The conditional tense doesn’t matter. What was sickening was that the first thing he thought of when hearing of a terrorist attack was how to spin it to his advantage back home.
None of the other leaders did that. They all behaved with far more basic humanity.
On that note. A short memorial service is being held at 11.45 at Parliament today.
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