Trump to lay out U.S. strategy
Afghanistan focus of Monday speech
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump will lay out his U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan in a prime-time television address to the American people on Monday night, the White House said Sunday.
A White House statement said Trump’s 6 p.m. PDT speech from Fort Myer, Virginia, near Washington, would “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia.”
It will be Trump’s third prime-time address to the country as president after a speech to Congress in February that is part of an annual tradition for U.S. presidents and his announcement in January of Neil Gorsuch as his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, ending a working vacation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, reached his decision on Afghanistan after talks with his military and national security aides at Camp David, Maryland, on Friday.
The president, who launched a strategy review for the region shortly after taking office in January, has expressed fatigue at the long-running Afghanistan war launched by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and privately questioned whether sending more American troops was wise, U.S. officials said.
“We’re not winning,” he told advisers in a mid-july meeting, questioning whether Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, should be fired, an official said.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has argued that a U.S. military presence is needed to protect against the threat from Islamist militants, the official said.
White House national security adviser H.R. Mcmaster and other advisers favored accepting Nicholson’s request for some 4,000 additional U.S. forces.