President Trump will discuss the “path forward” in Afghanistan in a speech at 9 p.m. ET.
The speech, to be delivered at the Fort Myer military base in Arlington, Virginia, will “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia.”
Associated Press: “After months of sometimes heated internal debate, the Trump administration has almost reached a decision on a new approach for fighting the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday. He gave no hint of what the strategy would look like.”
“The White House is actively considering a bold plan to turn over a big chunk of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to private contractors in an effort to turn the tide in a stalemated war,” USA Today reports.
“Under the proposal, 5,500 private contractors, primarily former Special Operations troops, would advise Afghan combat forces. The plan also includes a 90-plane private air force that would provide air support in the nearly 16-year-old war against Taliban insurgents.”
President Trump “has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war’s top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House,” NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “We aren’t winning. We are losing.”
Trump also “inquired about the United States getting a piece of Afghan’s mineral wealth.” He then “compared the policy review process to the renovation of a famed New York restaurant in the 1980s.”
“President Trump’s most senior military and foreign policy advisers have proposed a major shift in strategy in Afghanistan that would effectively put the United States back on a war footing with the Taliban,” the Washington Post reports.
“The new plan, which still needs the approval of the president, calls for expanding the U.S. military role as part of a broader effort to push an increasingly confident and resurgent Taliban back to the negotiating table, U.S. officials said.”
The United States has dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb in combat on Afghanistan, CNN reports.
The MOAB is also known as the “mother of all bombs” and is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
They said the target was ISIS tunnels and personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
President Obama “has ordered a significant slowdown in the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, senior administration officials said, a decision that marks a major reversal in his war plan and effectively hands the conflict over to his successor,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Under pressure at home and abroad, Mr. Obama decided—following a strategy review—to maintain the current American force of 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through most of next year, and to leave a force of 5,500 U.S. troops in the country in 2017, when he leaves office.”
New York Times: “In abandoning his ambition to bring home almost all American troops before leaving office, Mr. Obama appears to be acknowledging that Afghan security forces are still not near ready to hold off the Taliban on their own.”
“Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of ‘training and advising,'” the New York Times reports.
“In public, officials have emphasized that the Taliban are not being targeted unless it is for ‘force protection’ — where the insurgents were immediately threatening American forces. But interviews with American and Western officials in Kabul and Washington offer a picture of a more aggressive range of military operations against the Taliban in recent months, as the insurgents have continued to make gains against struggling government forces.”
“We’re starting it in July of 2011 and we’re going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014.”
— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Telegraph in 2010, not foreseeing President Obama’s expansion of the military effort in Afghanistan this month.
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]Brace yourself for hell or high water. [/speech_bubble]
“President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year… The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]It’s increasingly likely that President Obama will leave office after 8 years with troops still in Iraq and Afghanistan.[/speech_bubble]
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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