Poised to decide whether to surge U.S. troops into Afghanistan, President Trump aims to \u201cfully eliminate\u201d threats to U.S. and allied interests around the world, the White House said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe need to fully eliminate any threat around the globe, frankly, not just in Afghanistan, that poses a threat to our people and our allies,\u201d press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing.<\/p>\n
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The review of America\u2019s Afghanistan strategy is done, and the president will be briefed \u201csoon,\u201d a top aide told Yahoo News. This sets the stage for Trump to decide whether or not to hurl more troops into America\u2019s longest war.<\/p>\n
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The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. John Nicholson Jr., warned the Senate Armed Services Committee in early February that the war in Afghanistan was in a \u201cstalemate\u201d and that \u201cwe have a shortfall of a few thousand\u201d troops.<\/p>\n
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But the decision \u2014 and the White House\u2019s newly expansive language \u2014 risk alienating some of the president\u2019s supporters. As candidate, Trump promised an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy focused on destroying the so-called Islamic State while resisting nation-building entanglements. He repeatedly condemned spending on military interventions overseas as wasting dollars that could better be used to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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Asked about the potential disconnect, Spicer said Trump\u2019s \u201cpriorities remain the same. But he\u2019s going to do what he can to make sure that he protects the country and our people.\u201d<\/p>\n
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At the same time, Spicer played down speculation that the president could sharply escalate troops numbers above their current level of 8,400. Several news reports have put the potential increase in U.S. forces at 3,000-5,000, with more coming from NATO allies.<\/p>\n
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\u201cJust because you spend more, throw more people, doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re doing it in the most effective way,\u201d Spicer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poised to decide whether to surge U.S. troops into Afghanistan, President Trump aims to “fully eliminate” threats to U.S. and allied interests around the world, the White House said Tuesday. “We need to fully eliminate any threat around the globe, frankly, not just in Afghanistan, that poses a threat to our people and our allies,” press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing. The review of America’s Afghanistan strategy is done, and the president will be briefed “soon,” a top aide told Yahoo News. This sets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6705,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions\/6705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}