Hegseth jokes about US allies doing nothing in Afghanistan – despite hundreds losing their lives

‘Don’t try and make it look like I don’t care’, insisted secretary after saying he saw a ‘lotta flags’ but not a lot of effort from US partners

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to make light of the contributions made by America’s NATO allies during the war in Afghanistan at a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hegseth attempted to make a point that the White House and President Donald Trump himself have frequently made: that other NATO member-states should increase their defensive capabilities to match the benchmarks laid out in the defense pact’s charter.

Instead, the secretary harked back to a remark he told Sen. Chris Coons (D-Conn.) was commonly made by US service members on the ground in Afghanistan during his time in the service. Hegseth said his fellow Army National Guardsmen would often joke that the ISAF acronym on their shoulder patches — which stood for International Security Assistance Force — really stood for, “I saw Americans fighting.”

“Ultimately it was a lotta flags. Lotta flags. [But it] was not a lot of on-the-ground capability,” Hegseth continued in disparaging the NATO troops. “You’re not a real coalition, you’re not a real alliance, unless you have real defense capability, and real armies that can bring those to bear.”

His remark drew immediate rebuke from Coons, who noted the military and human contributions that America’s allies made after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when NATO’s Article 5 was invoked for the first time.

Pete Hegseth told senators that the ‘bulk of the effort was American’ during the war in Afghanistan (AP)

The Democratic senator launched into an explanation about how Denmark, with a population of just six million, suffered some of the highest losses per capita of any coalition ally, only closely trailing the United States.

“Let's just make clear for the record that our military partners in Afghanistan included many who served and died,” said the senator.

But Hegseth wasn’t finished.

“Don’t try and make it look like I don’t care about the investments of our partners,” said the secretary. “Of course I do. I recognize that there were lives lost from other countries. But the bulk of the effort was Americans.”

Alongside the US, 31 other countries participated in the war in Afghanistan and saw soldiers killed in combat and due to other circumstances. The U.S. lost 2,461 troops over the course of the longest military engagement in U.S. history, followed by the UK, which lost 457 service members.

The final deaths of the war occurred during a chaotic withdrawal from the country in 2021, following the fall of large tracts of territory to Taliban militants the U.S .and its allies failed to dislodge over the course of 20 years.

A blast attributed to Islamic State militants killed more than a dozen US service members outside of Kabul’s airport during the evacuation, while thousands of desperate Afghans crowded the facility and sought exit on American planes.

America’s participation in the war grew unpopular as it dragged on, and the withdrawal of forces was ordered by Donald Trump during his first presidency. Completed under Joe Biden, the chaotic nature of the pullout and the speed of the collapse of Afghanistan’s democratic government were points of soreness and contention in Washington, with defense hawks fretting that the Taliban takeover amounted to the country turning into a breeding ground for al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terror groups once again.

Britain’s House of Commons library reports that the total cost of UK contributions to the war topped 32.8 billion pounds, adjusted for 2024-25 price levels. Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees were also resettled by the UK and other US partners.

In 2021 and the two years following, Afghan refugees were the most common nationality accepted by the Home Office, according to the government’s figures.

The Trump administration in January froze a program allowing Afghan citizens who helped the US during the war against the Taliban, Islamic State and Al Qaeda to resettle in America.