Why Donald Trump's insult to UK's fallen troops in Afghanistan is a defining moment
US President’s contemptuous denigration of the soldiers from the UK and other countries who fought and died in Afghanistan speaks volumes about his true nature
Donald Trump’s entirely unnecessary comments that the US has never needed its Nato allies and that, in Afghanistan, their troops “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” were factually incorrect, an insult to the memory of fallen and shockingly callous towards relatives who still grieve for the loved ones they lost.
For the record, there were 457 British deaths in Afghanistan and our soldiers took part in that conflict after America invoked the Nato treaty’s article five – which states that an attack on one is an attack on all – in response to the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001. Like other countries, Britain answered America’s call for help, and our soldiers paid for it with their lives.
Trump has form for denigrating war heroes. He said of the late US Senator John McCain, who was shot down while serving as a combat pilot during the Vietnam War and was repeatedly tortured during years in captivity: “He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured.”
Cosying up to Putin
The US President has also repeatedly called his commitment to Nato into question by saying America might not defend countries that did not spend enough money on defence; by explicitly refusing to rule out a military attack on Greenland, part of Nato ally Denmark; and by cosying up to the Nato-hating Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, even as he wages a war of aggression in Ukraine and sends drones to test Nato ally Poland’s defences as part of a wider ‘hybrid’ war against Europe.
But these shameful, contemptuous remarks – which any reasonably intelligent person should have realised would cause distress and anger – seem almost deliberately designed to push America’s long-standing, democratic allies away.
Under Trump and his fellow travellers, we cannot trust that the US will be there in the event we need them, as we were for them in Afghanistan. A historic alliance, that has successfully defended the free world since the Second World War, appears to be falling apart.
The UK must rearm and integrate our Armed Forces with our democratic European allies – and it must do so urgently.
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