LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump provoked outrage and distress in the U.K. on Friday with his suggestion that troops from NATO countries stayed away…
U.S. President Donald Trump provoked outrage and distress in the U.K. on Friday with his suggestion that troops from NATO countries stayed away from the frontline during the war in Afghanistan.
In an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump said he was not sure NATO would be there to support the U.S. if and when requested.
“I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them and that’s really the ultimate test and I’m not sure of that,” Trump said. “We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them. 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 the U.K., which backed the U.S. in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and more controversially in Iraq two years later, the reaction was raw. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair said after 9/11 that the U.K. would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the U.S. in response to the al-Qaida attacks.
More than 150,000 British troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the U.
