US Mood Hardens as Leader of Ally Philippines Stokes Outrage
In Hawaii to meet with Southeast Asian defense ministers, Defense Secretary Ash Carter hinted at U.S. impatience with the Philippine government over Duterte’s remarks. “Just speaking personally for myself, I find these comments deeply troubling,” Carter said. A day earlier, he had described the U.S. relationship with the Philippines as “ironclad.”
The State Department has tended to parry questions about Duterte’s outbursts. Spokesman Mark Toner also described the Holocaust reference as “troubling.” However, Sen. Ben Cardin, top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pulled no punches.
“It is reprehensible and, frankly, disgusting that a democratically elected leader is talking about the mass murder of his own people, with Hitler’s Holocaust as his inspiration, no less,” he said.
Cardin and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, author of a law that prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign security forces that commit gross human rights abuses, took to the Senate floor this week to decry the drug war. They accused Duterte of terrorizing Filipinos through his drug war and endorsing “mass murder.”
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