Lawmakers and military families condemned President Donald Trump’s shocking comments that disparaged NATO troops who were wounded and died fighting for the U.S. in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Speaking to Fox Business on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Trump questioned whether NATO “will be there when we need them.”
“We never needed them,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “We’ve never really asked them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, and they did — they stayed a little bit back, a little bit away from the front lines. But we’re pretty good in Europe and a lot of other countries.”
His message sparked outrage in Britain, which has sent more than 150,000 troops to Afghanistan in the years since the US-led invasion in 2001.
The British casualty, which, after the American, was the second largest of the campaign, lost 457 soldiers, while thousands were wounded.
“They were absolutely on the front line,” Lucy Aldridge, whose son William died in Afghanistan when he was 18, told The Mirror. “And to ignore it, let’s face it, Trump isn’t particularly hot in history … He’s so out of touch with reality, and what it costs in human life. He has no mercy for anyone who doesn’t serve him.”
Diane Durney, whose son Ben Parkinson was critically injured in Afghanistan in 2006, said Trump’s latest comments were the “ultimate insult”.
The response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was the only time that NATO invoked the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense requirement. / Sara K. Switek/Reuters
Starmer’s official spokesman pointed out that only in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks did NATO invoke Article 5, the alliance’s collective defense principle that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all, the Telegraph reported.
“Their sacrifice and that of other NATO allies was made in the service of collective security and in response to an attack on our ally,” Starmer’s spokesman said of the wounded and killed soldiers. “The president was wrong to reduce the role of NATO forces.”
Starr later called Trump’s comments about NATO troops “insulting and frankly terrifying.”
He said, ‘I will never forget their courage, bravery and the sacrifice they made for the country. “I find President Trump’s comments outrageous and frankly appalling and I am not surprised that they have caused such hurt to the loved ones of those killed or injured and, indeed, across the country.”
Starr said Trump should apologize for the comments.
The Conservative Party also blasted Trump’s comments, with Tory leader Kimmy Badenoch calling them “absolutely appalling” and “disgraceful”.
“It’s sad to see the sacrifice of our nation, and the sacrifice of our NATO partners, being cheapened by the president of the United States,” said Conservative member of parliament Ben Obes-Jechty, who served as a captain in the Royal Yorkshire Regiment in Afghanistan, according to the ABC.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starr told Trump
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The president’s dumping on NATO forces was reminiscent of his earlier comments about Americans who died in combat being “suckers” and “losers.”
During a visit to France in 2018, the president said American soldiers who died on French soil during WWI were “lost” and that American Marines who helped stop the 1918 German advance toward Paris “sucked” to die at the hands of the enemy.
The White House denied reports of the comments, which were revealed by The Atlantic magazine in 2020, but they are just one example of the president disparaging military veterans and their families.
In December, he struggled to garner much sympathy for the families of Americans killed fighting in Ukraine – many of them US military veterans.
He has mocked the late Sen. John McCain’s battle injuries, publicly insulted the parents of a 27-year-old soldier killed in a car bombing in Iraq, and privately raged about the funeral expenses of a female soldier killed by a male soldier at Fort Hood.
