Watch Live: President Trump Unveils “New Path Forward” For Afghanistan

As we detailed last night, President Trump will unveil his long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan tonight. Will he, as Ron Paul suggests, do the sensible thing and end the failed longest war in history? Or will he continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will “win” the war? Does America even know what “winning” looks like in Afghanistan?
Here’s Ron Paul’s preview (which may be a post-mortem)…
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With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump’s inner circle to halt the simmering push for war, we suspect we know the answer, and as The Hill details, here’s what to look for in his speech…
How many more troops? The United States has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan on a dual mission of training, advising and assisting Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism missions against groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Trump gave Mattis the authority in June to send more troops there, but Mattis has held off deploying any more until Trump finalized a strategy. ‘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 told reporters traveling with him on Sunday. Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U. S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said he needs a ‘few thousand’ more troops to break the stalemate against the Taliban. That few thousand is said to equal about 4,000 U. S. troops. Those troops would be used to embed with conventional Afghan forces closer to combat – at the battalion level – and improve the capabilities of the Afghan air force and special operations forces. Nicholson assured the Afghans on Sunday that the U. S. commitment to the country will continue. ‘I assure you we are with you in this fight. We are with you, and we will stay with you,’ Nicholson said during a ceremony at Camp Morehead, a training base for Afghan commandos southeast of Kabul.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 21, 2017.