Misquote history at your own risk

Ethan Brown

I’ve made it a personal charter to avoid getting too caught up in, or even acknowledging, the theatricalities and rhetoric of the Donald Trump presidencies. This goes as far back as my 2015 deployment to Afghanistan. Back then, as a temporary Air Advisor, I was based at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), Kabul, and traveled to all the various Afghan National Army (ANA) Brigades to conduct air-to-ground integration training.

At the time (2015-2016), Trump was simply a bombastic candidate whose popularity climbed alongside that very rhetoric; it was easy for the non-beltway, not-in-DC demographic, the proverbial salt-of-the-earth Americans to gravitate towards. Simple messaging. Straightforward, devil-may-care mantras. I don’t care for his language but dammit he tells it like it is, was a popular refrain. It reminded me then of the early Family Guy episode where Lois Griffin runs for Mayor, and her answer to every single question was “Nine… Eleven,” which of course swept the cartoon crowd in the town hall up into raucous applause. The many different strokes of people I worked with on that deployment, both military and non-military alike, frequently asked for my opinion as an American. I had none back then, and thought of candidate Trump as a novelty, as did much of the world.

Since those early years of Donald Trump becoming the most recognizable face and voice on earth, I’ve maintained my own internal scorecard on his administration’s many decisions; a simple binary scoresheet just for my own judgement-shaping. Plenty of his decisions and actions resulted in a “good Trump” score, and indeed, plenty of baffling and inexplicable actions produced a corresponding “bad Trump” score. From 2016-2020 – making some exception for the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a true outlier in all judgements – Trump generally produced a positive score, while I often simply shook my head in exasperation or held outright indifference with his lack of decorum, obstinate methods of statesmanship, and churlishness. But in all, I chalked it up to a non-career politician disrupting the status quo that is the beltway. From 2020-2024, that same scoresheet was applied to the ongoing rhetoric farming. Bad scores were given to the man who happened to be the very sore loser of the 2024 presidential election (an understandably upsetting event for anyone) for his obnoxious commentary on his own politicized social media platform about the opposing candidate who beat him outright. Good scores were also given whenever he made a valid point on international or domestic events that stimulated dialogue on key issues.

This is as good of a time as any to uncover the lede; when I mentioned previously that the people around me during that Afghanistan deployment frequently asked my thoughts about Trump and American politics, those inquires came from NATO personnel with whom I worked closely. Romanians. Czechs. Hungarians. British. Germans. Danes. French. There were also non-NATO allies and not-yet NATO representatives: Australians and Norwegians, to name a few. I was one US GI surrounded by allies in a NATO-driven mission (Operation Resolute Support).

Nearly all these personnel hailed from either the aviation or Special Operations (SOF) military cohorts. It’s one thing to assert that combat support or non-combat specialties rarely, if ever, are exposed to danger of closing with the enemy. It’s another thing entirely to suggest that those pilots or SOF members weren’t shoulder-to-shoulder with American forces in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The NATO partners I worked with, on this and several other combat deployments afterwards (once I left the conventional Air Force and went into the dark ether of USSOCOM, where I worked with myriad other nationalities and cohorts), are all too familiar with the sounds, sights, and stench of direct combat with the enemy.

There’s a data point most people don’t think about when we tell stories of combat… the smell. That’s a memory that you never shake, because those sensory inputs are seared much deeper into your subconscious than even sounds or visions. The smell is what takes me back to my dark places, and just as surely, our NATO allies have combat veterans who indeed recall the smell of those faraway places. Afghanistan bore this unforgettable musky fragrance that I’ve never encountered anywhere else but will jarringly recall it every now and then.

The lede, then, is that I’ve spent nearly a decade remaining neutral on all things Donald Trump, mainly the rhetoric. That is, I’ve been neutral or indifferent until his comments at the Davos gathering this week when he baselessly asserted that NATO troops had “stayed a little back from the front line” during the war in Afghanistan.

457 British Friendlies killed in action.

158 Canadians Friendlies killed in action.

86 French Friendlies killed in action.

59 Germans Friendlies killed in action.

52 Danes Friendlies killed in action.

44 Polish Friendlies killed in action.

9 Norwegians Friendlies killed in action.

For shame that America should be represented on the world stage by such baseless and buffoonish claims.

Trump’s comments are in fact literally accurate, however. Those NATO forces were never on a front line. Neither were any of the American forces deployed to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan had no “front lines.” The Pech Valley in Kunar had no discernable front, as if there were territory on one side of a valley held by the Taliban, and coalition forces (allegedly led exclusively by U.S. personnel) on the other. The mountain passes in Paktika weren’t demarcated by Al Qaida sectors holding against coalition gains to be contested and pushed back. The torrid sands of Helmand did not feature clear and obvious Taliban centers of gravity on one side of the River, and NATO forces on the other. I could go on with tongue-in-cheek examples. But the point remains: there was no front line. The enemy were everywhere, they wore Afghan military uniforms, sometimes, and gunned down American and coalition servicemembers alike during insider attacks. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) killed indiscriminately and were feared by NATO members just as we feared them. The enemy were nowhere, because you couldn’t tell them apart from the beleaguered and tired Afghan populace who they hailed form; unless, of course, they were shooting at you (meaning the American and NATO forces alike).

In those places, the enemies were everywhere, hiding among the civilians. Any “front” would have to have been the many forward operating bases (FOBs) and Combat Outposts (COPs) that littered the hinterlands and main road, many of which our NATO allies manned and supported and bled for just as our servicemembers did. And such a “front” was in every compass direction. There were no front lines, and only purposeful cognitive dissonance could permit anyone, even an uninformed person, to speak on the war in Afghanistan in such outdated and flawed abstractions.

Read “The Tigers and the Taliban” by Lars Johannesen, recounting the heroism and austerity of the first Danish combat troops sent to Southern Afghanistan (Helmand) in 2006-2007. Then read “With a Few Guns: Vol. I” by Brian Reid, Wolf Riedel and Mark Zuehlke, which recounts the very literal shoulder-to-shoulder burden borne by our Canadian brothers and sisters in Kandahar from the very beginning of the War on Terror.

Then, if I may offer the following without sounding like a grifter or opportunist, get a copy of my next book “Visual Friendlies, Tally Target Volume II: Surges.” Nearly a third of that book is filled with NATO forward air controllers (JTACs), as in, not American JTACs, integrating air power to eliminate the enemy and protect civilians and friendly forces with the most devastating weapons on the battlefield (close air support). There is a Dane, a German, a Canadian, and a British representative in that work. There were many others who I spoke to about contributing their voices to the JTAC history project: Czech, French, Norwegian, and Hungarian; but these men declined for various personal reasons, including the stigma held by their home countries for the heartbreaking reality of America’s longest war. Several other NATO allied servicemembers were either impacted by or passed away from cancer – no doubt a result of their time spent exposed to toxic burn pits and other cancer-inducing factors that underwrote the War on Terror – before they could be included in this history.

There is absolutely no excuse for dismissing the burden carried and sacrifices made by our coalition partners during the post-9/11 wars. It’s one thing to tout an “America First” mantra or grand policy; after all, in a realist international relations arena, self-security is and should be a state’s first priority. But purposefully alienating our closest allies, despite their myriad warts or flaws (as if the United States didn’t have enough of her own), it beggars belief. That isn’t an America First commentary, that’s an “America Alone” suggestion.

Imagine if any one of our European partners made similar claims about the American lives sacrificed in World War II. “Yeah, the American GIs stayed a little back from the front line.” Imagine the outrage from those same grandmas and grandpas then and now if a European head of state made such absurd claims of history.

It was Winston Churchill who said “The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them.” He spoke in reference to the long-delayed plans to invade the France in June, 1944, to finally begin the relief of the Nazi-dominated lands of the European continent. Ironically, there’s the contemporary correlation to Trump’s long list of indiscretions and the World’s most devastating conflict. I won’t lean into the theatricality of our social media driven, hot-take fueled discourse; and I am not making any ridiculous claims like “Trump is a fascist” or “a dictator” just because he said some boorish and utterly false claims. Yes, he has too much power, just like every President who has served before him going back generations. Yes, he has a lengthy history in misquoting history to suit his narrative. As an offensively obnoxious millennial, I’ll chalk that up to “boomer vibes” – an entire generation of grandmas and grandpas who think that their age entitles them to say whatever vulgar or foolish thing because no one will correct them.

But in all serious discussion, I have no intention of this blog serving as fodder for more sensationalist rhetoric for either side of the political aisle. Such commentary has become so erroneous because we’ve abused those terms for years, making commonplace the labels that should incite genuine concern. The social discourse has cheapened words like “fascist” and “nazi” just like the opposing political faction has cheapened terms like “liberal” and “progressive.” Such is not the purpose of my write up here.

What I will state, in this commentary, is that baseless claims like Trump’s comments about our NATO partners and their veterans sacrifices during the GWOT couldn’t possibly advance any American interests abroad or at home. There is absolutely nothing valuable to be gained from this kind of divisiveness. There is no profound, 3-D chess match being played by a master statesman while other world leaders are confused and clutching their checkers pieces.

This is shameful. An utter disgrace. It’s an insult to those coalition partners who fought in our war. This is misquoting history. Do so at your own risk.