Sen. Leila de Lima's reaction to the US State Department's move to stop the planned sale of some 26,000 assault rifles to PHL:

Such reactions from the US should have been expected from the start of the war on drugs with its accompanying toll of EJKs. Independent of the White House, members of the US Congress can and do block arms sales even to allied countries as a result of poor human rights records or apparent State-tolerated use of violence against the civilian population.

The Duterte Administration saw this coming and of course was most probably indifferent to its consquences as its social media support groups and fake news sites will now drum this up as an opportunity to be independent of the US, and its support weapons supplies and technology.

This so-called independent positioning is hallow and all bluster. It will only lead to our further isolation from and hostility to not only the US but also its allies in the region like Japan, Australia, and South Korea. The question is, how does this deliberate strategy to isolate us from our friends fit a comprehensive foreign policy shift that would somehow benefit us as a nation. We cannot go on telling the US to leave us alone just because we dont want it prying into our human rights records and EJKs. Sooner or later something has to give. And as the recent visit of the State Department Assistant Secretary for the Pacific has laid out, nobody has yet won against the US in such confrontations.

This is just the start of what we will be reaping from the US as result of the isolationist whirlwind this Administration has sown and continue to sow out of an incomprehensible and ridiculous policy shift to anti-Americanism and pro-totalitarian Chinese hegemony in Asia.