DMW

[DMW @donnamwilson]

@jprsce "I can see my house from here"

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Bollocks to eating nuts, the squirrels in Scotland gorge themselves on Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Midnight and sunshine.. 😊

[Urianger Augurelt @SpeakerOfRunes]

I, at the slightest inconvenience

[Cats with Aura 😺 @catwithaura]

Buying this halloween costume for my cat was a huge mistake

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Tiny turtles with algae

[Voltikz @Voltikz]

What an absolutely fucking decrepit and vile, senile old man. Over a thousand non-US NATO member troops paid the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, and he thinks "They stayed a little back, off the front lines".

Give me a fucking break.

[Greg Bagwell @gregbagwell]

@realDonaldTrump Tell that to the families and loved ones of the 453 UK soldiers who paid the ultimate sacrifice for your war on terror in Afghanistan.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Donald Trump says Britain stayed off the front lines in Afghanistan, and those words do not merely miss the mark. They scrape against graves. Four hundred and fifty-seven British service personnel were killed in that war. Many more were broken in body and mind. They did not die in rear areas or behind wire. They died in Helmand, in Sangin, on roads seeded with mines, in firefights that lasted hours. They died doing exactly what allies are meant to do when they give their word, and any attempt to soften that truth is an insult dressed up as bravado.

When Donald Trump says British troops stayed "a little back", he is not misremembering. He is shrinking the war to suit himself. He is sanding down sacrifice because it complicates the picture he wants to paint, a picture of America alone, burdened, used by others. For that picture to work, allied blood has to fade from view, and history has to be pared down until it flatters the speaker.

Britain went into Afghanistan because the United States asked, and because NATO invoked Article 5 after 9/11. That clause exists for one reason. Collective defence. Shared risk. Britain honoured it, not for weeks or months but for twenty years. British units took responsibility for some of the most violent ground in the country. They did not rotate in for appearances. They stayed. They held. They buried their own, and they carried the cost home with them.

Time and again, hearses rolled through Wootton Bassett. Shops closed. People lined the streets in silence. Parents stood with photographs of sons who would never grow older. No one watching those processions thought they were witnessing the aftermath of a war fought from a safe distance. They knew they were seeing the price of loyalty, paid in full and paid publicly.

Then there is Ben Parkinson, he was twenty-two when his Land Rover hit a mine in Helmand. The blast broke his back, destroyed his face, collapsed his lungs, shattered every rib. Surgeons removed both his legs above the knee. He lay in a coma for months and survived only just. To suggest that men like him were not on the front line is not an error. It is a moral failure that speaks volumes about how lightly some people treat the cost of war.

That is why the response from Kemi Badenoch matters. Calling this flat-out nonsense was not a party manoeuvre. It was a line that had to be drawn. A country that will not defend the honour of its war dead has already started to forget what it is, and forgetting is how alliances rot from the inside.

This reaches beyond Britain. Alliances survive on memory and trust, on the knowledge that when the call comes, those who answered before will be remembered with honesty. Once leaders start treating past sacrifice as disposable, future promises thin out. Solidarity becomes a word rather than a bond, and deterrence turns into noise.

None of this is anti-American. Americans fought and died alongside British troops in Afghanistan. They remember Sangin. They remember Helmand. They know who stood with them. This rewriting insults them too, because it denies the shared nature of the war they fought.

Strength is not found in belittling allies or trimming history to fit a speech. It lies in telling the truth, especially when the truth is heavy. Afghanistan was a shared war. Britain carried its share in blood. Anyone who cannot say that plainly has no business talking about loyalty, alliance, or honour at all.

"Ben Parkinson was twenty-two when his Land Rover hit a mine in Helmand. The blast broke his back, destroyed his face, collapsed his lungs, shattered every rib. Surgeons removed both his legs above the knee."

[Neil Lancaster @neillancaster66]

Fucking prick

My son spent 6 months in Iraq, and then two 7 month tours of Afghanistan with the Royal Marines

He fought hard in Sangin saw friends die, or be maimed. He bears scars of his own, and he did it because the USA triggered article 5

Risible, amoral fucking bastard

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Trump's comments about British troops in Afghanistan were deeply offensive.

"They stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines."

We should never have been in those hellholes, but so many decent British men and women lost their lives fighting there.

Not a 'little off' the frontlines, but fighting alongside American allies and others.

We should never have been involved in those wars, and I will never forgive the cowards who took us into them. And yes, of course we need to spend more on our military capabilities.

That does NOT excuse Trump's comments.

The troops there were patriotic men and women who should have their memory and service honoured, not demeaned by the American President.

I like Trump. He's good for the West. But these comments were abhorrent. I sincerely hope he apologises.

[Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage]

Donald Trump is wrong. For 20 years our armed forces fought bravely alongside America's in Afghanistan.

[Bricktop_NAFO @Bricktop_NAFO]

🇬🇧 This is Prince Harry from the British Royal Family in Afghanistan whilst he was “Staying a little back, off the front lines”..

[JonnyUtd @Fx1Jonny]

The fucking ungrateful arrogance of this piece of shit.

British soldiers were right on the front lines in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban who many lost their lives!!

I fucking hate this 🛎️ end!! Fuck you!!

[Rasmus Jarlov @RasmusJarlov]

Trump: "You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this and that. And they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines".

Danish soldiers, Helmand Province, 2009:

[Veterans’ Foundation @VeteransFdn]

Today, we remember Craftsman Anthony Lombardi, aged 21, from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, died whilst serving in Afghanistan.

Lest we forget.🌺🕯️

[Military Support @MilitaryCooI]

Marine Corps Sgt. Zachary Stinson standing for the national anthem. He lost both of his legs to an IED in Afghanistan in 2010.