The UK's Prince Harry joined the outraged response on Friday to President Trump's contention that US allies largely hung back during the fighting in Afghanistan after 9/11. Harry, who did two tours in Afghanistan while serving in the British army, said in a statement that the sacrifices of troops who responded to the 2001 invocation of NATO's Article 5 "deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect," People reports. "I served there. I made lifelong friends there," he said. "And I lost friends there."
In a Fox News interview that aired Thursday, Trump questioned whether NATO partners would "be there" if the US needed them, adding that while allies "sent some troops to Afghanistan," they "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." In response to the 9/11 attacks, the US assembled a coalition to remove al-Qaeda and the ruling militant group the Taliban from Afghanistan, per NBC News. As Harry pointed out, that included NATO triggering Article 5 for the only time in its history. "It meant that every allied nation was obliged to stand with the United States in Afghanistan, in pursuit of our shared security. Allies answered that call," he said.
Others from allied nations who served and their families objected to Trump's assessment, per the BBC. His comments are "as personal as it gets," said the mother of Cyrus Thatcher, a British service member killed in Afghanistan at age 19 by an IED while helping a US bomb disposal team reach safety. "I think they should put Donald Trump in a uniform and put him on the front line, instead of pushing a pen behind a desk. He should go out there and do it himself," said the mother of Christopher Kershaw, who was killed 14 years ago at 19 when the armored vehicle he was driving ran over an IED. He was three weeks into the deployment, his mother said, adding that she misses him every day. "I wonder what he would be doing now," she said.
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