By Sam Tabahriti and Małgorzata Wojtunik
LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Veterans from across Europe hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that they had stayed “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan, saying on Friday that hundreds of their comrades had died fighting alongside American forces.
Senior politicians joined the criticism, with the British prime minister’s office saying Trump had been “wrong to diminish the role of NATO troops” during two decades of war.
Trump told Fox News on Thursday the United States had “never needed” the transatlantic alliance and accused allies of staying “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.
His remarks added to already strained relations with European allies after he used the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to again signal his interest in acquiring Greenland.
‘WE PAID IN BLOOD FOR THIS ALLIANCE’
“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.”
Britain’s veterans minister, Alistair Carns, whose own military service included five tours including alongside American troops in Afghanistan, called Trump’s claims “utterly ridiculous”.
“We shed blood, sweat and tears together. Not everybody came home,” he said in a video posted on X.
Stuart Tootle, a retired British colonel who commanded the first British 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 Britain and other Western European nations, he had none for the president’s “really unfortunate, inaccurate and totally unjustified” remarks.
Even Richard Moore, the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, weighed in, saying he, like many MI6 officers, had operated in dangerous environments with “brave and highly esteemed” CIA counterparts and had been proud to do so with Britain’s closest ally.
Under NATO’s founding treaty, members are bound by a collective-defence clause, Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.
It has been invoked only once – after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. European allies responded by joining the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan.
POLISH SACRIFICE ‘MUST NOT BE DIMINISHED’
Some politicians noted that Trump had avoided the draft for the Vietnam War, citing bone spurs in his feet.
“Trump avoided military service 5 times,” Ed Davey, leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, wrote on X. “How dare he question their sacrifice.”
Poland’s sacrifice “will never be forgotten and must not be diminished”, Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
“Poland is a reliable and proven ally, and nothing will change that,” he said on X.
Trump’s comments were “ignorant”, said Rasmus Jarlov, an opposition Conservative Party member of Denmark’s parliament.
The United States lost about 2,460 troops in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. A total of 457 British military personnel were killed from the more than 150,000 who were deployed.
More than 150 Canadians were also killed along with 90 French service personnel, while Denmark – which has been under heavy pressure from Trump to sell its semi-autonomous region of Greenland to the U.S. – lost 44 troops, one of NATO’s highest per-capita death rates.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Elizabeth Evans in London, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Malgorzata Wojtunik in Gdansk, additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Writing by Sam Tabahriti; editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Heavens)
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