On Monday evening, President Trump declared to the world that his administration is moving on from wasting billions of dollars on “nation-building,” and will focus on killing terrorists inside Afghanistan.
.@POTUS: "We are not nation-building again, we are killing terrorists." pic.twitter.com/C1tDpnYLtr
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 22, 2017
“We are not nation-building again, we are killing terrorists,” said President Trump.
AP reports:
President Donald Trump declared Monday night the United States must continue fighting in Afghanistan to avoid the “predictable and unacceptable” results of a rapid withdrawal from the country where the U.S. has been at war for 16 years.
In a prime-time address to the nation, Trump said his “original instinct was to pull out,” alluding to his long-expressed view before becoming president that Afghanistan was a unsolvable quagmire requiring a fast U.S. withdrawal. Since taking office, Trump said, he’d determined that approach could create a vacuum that terrorists including al-Qaida and the Islamic State could “instantly fill.”
“I concluded that the security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense,” Trump said.
Though his speech was billed as an announcement of his updated Afghanistan policy, Trump offered few specifics about what it would entail. He did not provide a number of additional troops that will be sent to the war, though U.S. officials said ahead of the speech they expect him to go along with a Pentagon recommendation for nearly 4,000 new troops.
