UK PM says Trump comment on NATO Afghan role appalling

US President Donald Trump has provoked outrage and distress in the United Kingdom after suggesting troops from NATO countries stayed away from the frontline during the war in Afghanistan.

In an interview with the Fox Business Network on Thursday, Trump said he was not sure the NATO military alliance would be there to support the US if and when requested.

“I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them and that’s really the ultimate test and I’m not sure of that,” Trump said.

“We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that -and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”

In the UK, which backed the United States in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and in Iraq two years later, the reaction was raw.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned Trump’s remarks about allied troops in Afghanistan.

“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling and I am not surprised they have caused such hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured and, in fact, across the country.”

When asked whether he would demand an apology from the US leader, Starmer said: “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologise.”

Then-prime minister Tony Blair said after 9/11 that the UK would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the US in response to the al-Qaeda attacks.

More than 150,000 UK troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the US-led 2001 invasion, the largest contingent after the US, and 457 died in the campaign.

“Those British troops should be remembered for who they were: heroes who gave their lives in service of our nation,” UK Defence Secretary John Healey said.

Afghanistan was the UK’s deadliest overseas war since the 1950s.

For several of the war’s most intense years it led the allied campaign in Helmand, Afghanistan’s biggest and most violent province, while also fighting as the main US battlefield ally in Iraq.

Stuart Tootle, a retired colonel who commanded the first UK battle group sent to Helmand, Afghanistan’s largest province, in 2006, said Trump should apologise.

He also said that while he had “some sympathy” for Trump’s criticism of what he described as under-investment in NATO by the UK and other members, he had none for the president’s “really unfortunate, inaccurate and totally unjustified” ?remarks.

It was not the first time that Trump downplayed the commitment of NATO members over the past few days.

It has been one of his pivotal lines of attack as he escalated his threats to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory belonging to Denmark.

The only time article five of NATO’s founding treaty has been used was in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The article is the key mutual defence clause obliging all member countries to come to the aid of another member whose sovereignty or territorial integrity might be under threat.

“When America needed us after 9/11, we were there,” former Danish platoon commander Martin Tamm Andersen said.

Forty-four Danish soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces, and eight more died in Iraq.

“We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former special forces commander who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.

Trump has “crossed a red line”, he added.

“We paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”

with Reuters and PA