Trumps Äußerungen zu Afghanistan-Kriegsveteranen lösen Gegenreaktionen bei Verbündeten aus

President Trump sparked outrage after he suggested that NATO allies avoided front-line combat during the war in Afghanistan, further straining an already tense relationship with some of the U.S.’s closest partners.

“We’ve never needed them,” Trump said. “We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say, they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”

British veterans of Afghanistan described Trump’s comments as extremely disrespectful. “Some of my colleagues and 457 others paid the ultimate price and thousands of guys like myself were wounded,” Corp. Andy Reid (Ret.) told the BBC. “Not a day goes by that we’re not in some kind of pain.”

Reid lost both his legs and his right arm in 2009 from having stepped on an improvised explosive device in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold which saw some of the conflict’s fiercest fighting.

While the U.S. suffered the highest level of losses in Afghanistan, the deaths per million of the population were only slightly higher than some of its closest allies. The U.S. had 7.9 deaths per million, followed by Denmark with 7.7, the U.K. with 7.2 and Estonia with 6.7. 

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