AFGHANISTAN STRATEGY DECIDED: President Trump plans to spell out his decision on how to break the stalemate in Afghanistan in a 9 p.m. EDT television address at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va, with an audience of U.S. troops. Trump settled on an option Friday, after consultation with more than 20 members of his national security team at the presidential retreat at Camp David. With fired White House chief strategist Steve Bannon out of the picture, the president is expected to go along with the consensus recommendation to augment the current force of military trainers and advisers, which includes 8,400 U.S. troops, with up to 4,000 additional trainers from the U.S. and other NATO countries. Bannon reportedly favored an alternative approach that would phase out the U.S. troop presence and replace them with private security personnel.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking to reporters en route to Jordan, said that while he has tactical authority to adjust troop levels in Afghanistan, he has been reluctant to make any major changes until the overarching strategy was settled. “I was not willing to make significant troop lifts until we made certain we knew what was the strategy, what was the commitment going in,” Mattis said. “[Trump] wants to be the one to announce it to the American people, so I'll stand silent until then. … Once he announces what the strategy is, we can get more precise on Afghanistan troop levels.”
WHAT A CONCEPT: The way the Afghan strategy announcement is being handled is a radical departure from the president’s past practice of waking up in the morning and blurting out his decision in a tweet or series of tweets. Instead, his post-meeting tweets have been notably circumspect. “Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan,” Trump tweeted Friday. The new, more disciplined approach has the fingerprints of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly all over it.
Mattis described the process of settling on the best strategy as a rigorous one involving everyone from the Treasury secretary to the Office of Management and Budget director, following months of sharpening the options to answer Trump’s concerns. “He really did come in with very different courses of action,” Mattis told reporters on his plane. “I think he now needs the weekend to collect his thoughts about how he's going to explain it to the American people.”
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT TROOPS: Mattis has been talking for months about how the strategy needs to extend beyond the borders of Afghanistan, in particular putting pressure on Pakistan to stop allowing the Taliban to have safe havens across the border, and to do more to eliminate al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists.
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05.15.2024