UK’s Starmer urges Trump to apologize for ‘insulting and frankly appalling’ NATO remark |
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has urged US President Donald Trump to apologize for his false assertion that troops from NATO countries — other than Americans — stayed away from the front line during the war in Afghanistan.
Trump said that he wasn’t sure NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested, provoking outrage and distress among many in the United Kingdom on Friday.
“We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them,” he said in an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. “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 October 2001, nearly a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, a US-led coalition launched an invasion of Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida, which had used the country as its base, and the group’s Taliban hosts. Alongside the US were troops from dozens of countries, including from NATO, whose mutual-defense mandate had been triggered for the first time after the attacks on New York and Washington.
In Britain, the reaction to Trump’s comments was raw and Starmer paid tribute to the 457 British personnel who died and said the president should apologize.
Trump:
"NATO has treated the US very badly. We've never asked for anything. We've never got anything."
Tell that to the families of 850 soldiers from 19 non-US NATO countries who died fighting to defend the US in Afghanistan – the only occasion Article 5 was ever triggered. pic.twitter.com/vKdLekODk4
— Adam Schwarz (@AdamJSchwarz) January........