“They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
That’s what Trump said at Davos about America’s NATO and NATO-aligned allies in Afghanistan. Two decades of sacrifice dismissed with a casual lie.
Here’s what “a little back” looks like:
457 British troops killed. 47 Australians. 10 New Zealanders. Over 1,100 allied personnel from 50+ nations who came home in coffins. Not because they had to, but because America asked.
The US invoked NATO’s Article 5 exactly once in history. After 9/11. Every ally answered.
America’s NATO allies and treaty partners were deployed under a formal collective defence obligation, not as volunteers or spectators.
Now the President of the United States tells the world their dead don’t count.
UK Prime Minister Starmer called the remarks “insulting” and “appalling.”
Australian Senator Jacqui Lambie, who served in the Australian Defence Force for 11 years, told her 461,000 Facebook followers that the president’s comments that allied troops hung back off the front lines were “utterly shameful” and called for him to apologise immediately.
But the damage runs deeper than hurt feelings.
As Canadian PM Carney put it recently: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Trump is burning alliances at a pace that will take decades to rebuild. And for what? What strategic advantage comes from spitting on the graves of soldiers who fought and died alongside Americans?
There is none. This is pure vandalism.
Note: I normally ignore Trump’s word salads. This one matters. It rewrites a shared history of sacrifice into a lie, and that demands rebuttal.
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A day later Trump ‘walks back’ his comments.
Insult first, retreat later. After belittling allied troops who fought and died in Afghanistan, Trump predictably faced fury from veterans and allies. The “clarification” that followed reads less like contrition than a forced backdown once the outrage landed.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” - Maya Angelou