United States President Donald Trump<\/a> has drawn criticism from British politicians after claiming that NATO forces stayed away from the front line during the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\nThe US president made the remarks in an interview with Fox News, a US broadcaster, where he again questioned the value of the military alliance and suggested that NATO allies would not come to Washington\u2019s aid if requested.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Speaking on Thursday, Trump said the US had \u201cnever needed\u201d NATO and claimed allied forces remained \u201ca little off the front lines\u201d during the Afghanistan conflict.<\/p>\n
The comments prompted a backlash across the UK political spectrum, with critics pointing to the scale of NATO casualties during the 20-year war and raising questions about Trump\u2019s own military record.<\/p>\n
Allies\u2019 losses<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom lost 457 service personnel in Afghanistan. More than 150 Canadian soldiers were killed, along with 90 French soldiers. Denmark lost 44 soldiers \u2013 one of the highest per-capita death rates among NATO members \u2013 despite the country recently facing continued pressure from Trump to sell its semi-autonomous territory of Greenland to the US.<\/p>\n
Stephen Kinnock, a junior British minister, described Trump\u2019s remarks as \u201cdeeply disappointing\u201d and said European forces had paid a heavy price while backing US-led operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany, many British soldiers and many soldiers from other European NATO allies gave their lives in support of American-led missions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq,\u201d Kinnock told the UK\u2019s Sky News broadcaster on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think anybody who seeks to criticise what [our armed forces] have done and the sacrifices that they make is plainly wrong,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u2018How dare he\u2019<\/p>\n
Kinnock also noted that the US remains the only NATO member to have invoked Article 5, the alliance\u2019s collective-defence clause, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, prompting allies to rally behind Washington.<\/p>\n
He said NATO was the most successful international security alliance \u201cin the history of the world\u201d, with the US and its European partners, including the UK, playing a central role.<\/p>\n
Other UK politicians highlighted Trump\u2019s history of avoiding military service during the Vietnam War. Trump received multiple draft deferments, including one based on a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels \u2013 a medical claim that has previously been questioned.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump avoided military service 5 times,\u201d Ed Davey, leader of the UK\u2019s Liberal Democrats, wrote on X. \u201cHow dare he question their sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK politicians have accused Trump of avoiding military service during the Vietnam War. Listen to this article\u00a0|\u00a03 mins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1641,1487,1296,626,3602,141,591,819,59,57,58,151,3105,50,22873,229,145960,56,54,158,55,3544],"class_list":["post-386210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-afghanistan","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-canada","tag-denmark","tag-donald-trump","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-news","tag-opinions","tag-politics","tag-september-11","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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