March 11, 2025 01:13 PM UTC

This Photo Aged Like Fine Milk (Don't Cozy Up to Murderous Dictators)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Way back in June 2017, then-Sen. Cory Gardner made an unannounced tour of several Asian countries as part of an effort to boost his international relations bonafides so that he could eventually be a candidate for Secretary of State or President of the United States. That tour included a boneheaded photograph with murderous dictator Rodrigo Duterte, who was then the President of the Philippines.

Gardner’s photo op was a bad look for the United States; Duterte’s long list of human rights violations were well known at the time. Duterte even earned the nickname of the “Trump of Asia” for his indifference to things like laws and decency.

As The New York Times reports today, criticism of Gardner’s, um, diplomacy was well deserved:

For years the bodies piled up.

Some were shot by vigilantes on motorbikes. Others had bullets in the head, execution style. In killing after killing, the police would only describe the victims as “drug suspects” who had resisted arrest, a charge that rarely stood up to even minor scrutiny. And yet the slaughter continued with impunity, at the behest of the man who was elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

But on Tuesday, nearly three years after Mr. Duterte left office, a major step was taken toward accountability for thousands of Filipinos who have long sought justice for their loved ones. Acting on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, which had been investigating Mr. Duterte’s antidrug campaign, the Philippine authorities arrested Mr. Duterte at Manila’s main airport as he returned from a trip to Hong Kong. On Tuesday night, he was flown out on a plane that was bound for The Hague, where the court is based, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. 

The I.C.C. accused Mr. Duterte, 79, of crimes against humanity during his time as president and when he was the mayor of the city of Davao…[Pols emphasis]

…Mr. Duterte’s camp said his detention was illegal, arguing in part that the I.C.C. had no jurisdiction in the Philippines because he had withdrawn the country from the court when he was president. But in the warrant, a three-judge panel wrote that it was investigating killings during the time the Philippines was still a member of the court. And the nation remains a member of Interpol, which can seek arrests on behalf of the I.C.C. A representative of Interpol was present when Mr. Duterte was arrested.

Gardner’s lesson is one that modern Republicans would be wise to learn as they fall over themselves parroting propaganda from Russian President Vladimir Putin: Getting cozy with murderous dictators never ends well.