UK and Poland accuse Hegseth of downplaying allies’ role in Afghanistan

LONDON — The British and Polish governments have criticized U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after he appeared to downplay the role fellow NATO members played in the Afghanistan war. No.10 Downing Street joined Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in pushing back at Hegseth, who told an audience at the University of Tennessee over the weekend that few NATO allies were “actually involved in kinetic operations.” “I was a captain in Afghanistan and we would go to the headquarters in Kabul and there would be 50 flags at the headquarters,” Hegseth recalled. “It was a beautiful thing to see, 50 different countries contributing to the NATO alliance and the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] mission there.