US President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States “would have won Afghanistan easy” if it had not become “politically correct,” renewing his tough rhetoric on the country as he continues to push for the return of the former US airbase at Bagram.
Speaking at an event marking the US Navy’s 250th anniversary at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, Trump said that past American wars were lost not because of a lack of power, but because the US “stopped fighting to win.”
“We would have won Afghanistan easy. We would have won every war easy. But we got politically correct. We’re not politically correct anymore,” Trump told the crowd. “Now we win.”
Trump’s comments come as he continues to call for the United States to regain control of the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, which was its largest military installation in Afghanistan before the withdrawal in 2021.
He first raised the issue in a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, and has since repeated the demand several times, saying that if the base is not “returned” to the US, Afghanistan could face “serious consequences.”
Trump has argued that Bagram’s location makes it strategically important because it lies “just about an hour from China’s nuclear weapons production area.”
Taliban have rejected Trump’s calls. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, told Al Arabiya English earlier that Bagram is “part of Afghanistan’s territory” and “will never be handed over.”
“Afghans are highly sensitive about occupation,” Mujahid said. “They will never allow their land to be controlled by foreigners again. During the 20 years of occupation, Afghanistan faced devastation every day, and the U.S. was eventually forced to withdraw.”
Trump’s repeated focus on Bagram signals a return to one of his long-standing critiques of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan — which he has called “the greatest humiliation in American history” — even as his administration faces new foreign policy challenges.
