“THEY stayed a little back,” Donald Trump said about British and Nato troops in Afghanistan.
“A little back”? Too many Brits never came back at all.
Likewise Canadians. And Danes. And Australians.
Too many Poles. Too many Estonians.
In the dusty foreign fields of Helmand, Sangin, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, they patrolled, cleared compounds, took fire, lost limbs, lost friends, came home changed, or returned in coffins.
A heartbreaking 457 British troops died during the two decades of war in Afghanistan. 2,000 more were wounded.
Read More FROM HARRY COLE
Donald Trump’s belittling comments — suggesting those brave men hid behind Uncle Sam’s coat tails, sipping tea at base camp — desecrates their service.
The claims were as insulting as they were inaccurate.
“We’ve never needed them,” Trump riffed. “We have never really asked anything of them.”
Yet Nato’s crucial Article 5 — an attack on one member is an attack against all — has only ever been triggered once, when America reeled from its big black eye in 2001.
Sand-ridden hellhole
What followed was the longest continuous conflict in the history of the United States.
And their friends stood by them for 20 long bloody years.
Trump said: “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.”
That wasn’t a slip of the tongue, or a campaign rally quip that can be shrugged off with a wink.
It was a calculated, gross insult to the lives of patriots who stood side-by-side with their American brothers in a sand-ridden hellhole in the name of “Enduring Freedom”.
So the slur has rightly caused boiling fury.
Not a line to be dismissed as just “Trump being Trump”, but a line crossed.
Even Sir Keir Starmer, who had been at pains all week to avoid joining in the condemnation from Europe over various US geo-political manoeuvrings — could not sit this one out.
Starmer has been walking the line this week, fending off tariffs and other diplomatic punishment beatings, for reasons of reality
He rightly said last night: “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.”
We can talk about the Labour Government’s appalling treatment of Troubles veterans or the shameful prosecution of troops for following orders in Iraq another day — but here the PM has rightly called for an apology.
Starmer has been walking the line this week, fending off tariffs and other diplomatic punishment beatings, for reasons of reality.
As he said last night: “We have a very close relationship with the US, and that is important for our security, for our defence and our intelligence, and it’s very important we maintain that relationship.
“But it is because of that relationship that we fought alongside the Americans for our values in Afghanistan.
“And it was in that context that people lost their lives or suffered terrible injuries fighting for freedom, fighting with our allies for what we believe in.”
President Trump is a streetfighter, the New York property developer who doesn’t pull his punches
Harry Cole
President Trump is a streetfighter, the New York property developer who doesn’t pull his punches.
He jabs and ducks and dives when he’s trying to get his own way.
He boasts, exaggerates and surprises, to often great effect.
But even the most successful fighters need to realise when the only face they are punching is their own.
This isn’t just about hurt feelings — though people are rightly insulted — it is about keeping the coalition, which rallied to the Nato and US flag in the wake of 9/11, alive.
President Trump was right to put a rocket under the alliance, to fix its paltry funding model, which left America picking up the tab while European nations spaffed money up the wall on welfare handouts.
He was right to say members should pull their weight, and he is right to keep up the pressure to make sure that happens.
Yet while the Commander in Chief likes to paint Nato as simply the US defending everyone else, deep down he knows the alliance scratches America’s back too.
The final insult
That is why, for all the shouting, he’s never seriously countenanced leaving it.
For the past 77 years, Nato has given America leverage on the global stage.
It has given the US global power without it always carrying the full burden — in blood as well as treasure — alone.
And nowhere was that clearer than in the hills and deserts of Afghanistan.
Trump has been right to call out the freeloaders and, while in the past it has become heated, this time the rhetoric does not match the reality
Harry Cole
Trump has been right to call out the freeloaders and, while in the past it has become heated, this time the rhetoric does not match the reality.
Lies like this give succour to America and Nato’s enemies — at home and abroad.
Trump’s haters scream almost daily that this will be the final row, the final scandal, the final insult — but too often that is just wishful thinking as the greased piglet wriggles free again.
But when you force even your supporters and allies to call out the indefensible, eventually they will grow weary of defending you — even when you are right.
That’s the situation President Trump is flirting with now as even Keir Starmer has been forced off the sidelines.
“THERE are weeks where decades happen”, old, beardy Lenin said. Which tracks for the first three weeks of 2026.
Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, a new beach resort planned for Gaza, and smoke signals for peace in Ukraine tentatively looking good.
And Labour’s baffling desire to pay tiny Mauritius to take ownership of the currently British Chagos Islands – and its vital, joint UK-US base – has gone in the upheaval blender too, with Sir Keir Starmer last night delaying his Chagos bill in the wake of a US backlash.
Frantic diplomatic efforts by the Foreign Office to have the US government ignore President Trump’s criticism that the deal is “an act of great stupidity” had been continuing behind the scenes.
But without US approval, it couldn’t go ahead.
It is a good test of what is really going on in Washington and who is ultimately in control.
Is it the State Department, which had gone along with Britain’s daft wishes, or Trump, who is not afraid to call a spade a spade?
