Trump Casually Denigrates Danish War Dead
- Benni Schmidt Pedersen lives on a small farm in Denmark, where it's quite and he can hear if anyone is coming down the gravel road to his home.
- I called him today to read him a quote from President Trump about America's NATO allies: "We've never needed them," Trump said in a fox News interview at...
- "Why doesn't it surprise me that he's saying that?"
Benni Schmidt Pedersen lives on a small farm in Denmark, where it’s quite and he can hear if anyone is coming down the gravel road to his home. He’s stricken with PTSD from his time as a soldier in Afghanistan, where five members of his 130-person company died in the American-led war against the Taliban.
I called him today to read him a quote from President Trump about America’s NATO allies: “We’ve never needed them,” Trump said in a fox News interview at the World Economic Forum, in Davos.”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, little off the front lines.”
Frist Pedersen laughed. Then he tried to brush it off-classic Trump bluster. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that he’s saying that?”
his voice dropped an octave. “That’s bullshit,” he said.
It is, indeed, bullshit. the United states invoked Article 5, the mutual-defense clause of NATO’s founding charter, the day after the September 11 attacks. It remains the only time in NATO’s nearly 80-year history that the obligation of common defense has been activated. All 28 members of the alliance at the time sent soldiers to Afghanistan. Many never returned.
consider these numbers:
An estimated 3,500 soldiers from NATO countries died in Afghanistan. The United States suffered the most losses in absolute terms: Nearly 2,500 U.S. service members where killed in the 20-year war. But per capita, Denmark suffered even more severe losses, burying 43 soldiers in a population, at the time, of about 5.5 million.
Other NATO members sacrificed, too. Britain lost about 450 soldiers, Canada more than 150. Other small countries, like Denmark, weren’t spared: Estonia lost nine soldiers. Norway, 10. Czech Republic, 14. Romania, 27.
Why does this matter now? Because Trump has been disparaging Europe’s contributions to NATO, and Denmark’s in particular, as he threatened to take over part of the Nordic contry’s territory.