President Trump will unveil his administration's strategy for Afghanistan on Monday night and could announce an increase in U.S. troops for what has become the longest war in U.S. history.
The Afghanistan announcement comes after Trump’s meeting with military advisers and his national security team at Camp David on Saturday.
Trump ally Newt Gingrich said Monday morning that he expects the president will announce plans to send several thousand more American troops to Afghanistan.
“I think what he's going to say is that there's a prudent investment, probably four to five thousand troops that allows us to train the Afghan army, which combined with a new level of pressure and the Pakistanis to clean up the northwest frontier, which is the sanctuary that the terrorists have been using, could lead us over the next few years into a much better future,” Gingrich, a former House speaker, said Monday morning on “Fox and Friends.”
Roughly 8,400 American troops are currently stationed in Afghanistan, working to train and advise Afghan military forces. Several thousand American personnel are also engaged in counterterror operations against al Qaeda and ISIS-Khorasan, the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan.
Top U.S. military officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, support sending as many as 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of a broader revamp of regional strategy.
Trump gave Mattis the authority to set troops levels in Afghanistan in June, after providing the defense chief with similar authority over troop levels in Iraq and Syria.
In February, Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. official leading the international coalition in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the mission had a “shortfall of a few thousand” troops.
The possibility that Trump will increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would contrast with his position in 2013, a few years prior to his election, when he said the U.S. should "get out of Afghanistan."
As a presidential candidate, Trump repeatedly criticized past administrations’ handling of the Afghanistan conflict, but said it would be a mistake for the U.S. to pull all troops out of the country.
“At this point, you probably have to stay because that thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave," Trump said in a CNN interview in 2015.
Eleven U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan this year. More than 2,250 Americans have died in the country since 2001.
Trump will make the Afghanistan strategy announcement - his first formal address to the nation since his February address to Congress – at Virginia’s Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, which is next to Arlington National Cemetery.
ABC's Luis Martinez and Elizabeth McLaughlin contributed.
from ABC News: Politics http://ift.tt/2vX5cu1
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