The mother of a Scottish soldier killed in Afghanistan has strongly criticised Donald Trump’s claim that allies “stayed a little back, a little off the front line” during the conflict. Janette Binnie, whose son Sean died in 2009 at the age of 22, described the former US president’s remarks as “soul-destroying” for her as a bereaved parent.
Trump had told Fox News that he was “not sure” NATO would be there for the US “if we ever needed them”, adding: “We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them.” He went on to say that while allies “did” send troops to Afghanistan, “they stayed a little back, a little off the front line”.
However, Binnie, from Crimond in Aberdeenshire, firmly rejected Trump’s assessment. “His comments are soul-destroying, for me personally as a mum that’s lost my only child in that war,” she told BBC Scotland News. “How can you stand there and say this?”
During the conflict in Afghanistan, 457 British service personnel were killed. The UK was one of several allies to join the US after NATO’s collective defence clause was invoked for the first time following the 9/11 attacks.
Pipe Major Scott Methven, who served two tours of Afghanistan with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, also criticised Trump’s remarks. “We are one of the few nations that have always stood hand-in-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States and always supported them,” he said. “It just diminishes the loss of soldiers on both sides actually.”
Methven, who was the Queen’s personal piper between 2015 and 2019, said British troops were “very much on the front line” and faced being “shot at”. He recalled the harrowing experience of carrying a fatally injured young soldier back to base in 2011, saying the incident “will live with me for the rest of my life”.
Downing Street has said Trump was “wrong” to diminish the role of NATO and British troops in Afghanistan. Binnie said she would “love” the former president to meet her, so she could tell him “how it is being an army wife and an army mother, and what it is to lose a child in those circumstances, something that he knows nothing about.”
