ARLINGTON, Va. (CN) – President Donald Trump on Monday night said it would be “counterproductive” to announce how many more troops he will send to Afghanistan, how U.S. strategy might change, when the war might end, and even what victory might look like, but said there will be no “hasty withdrawal” of U.S. forces.
“How counterproductive is it for the U.S. to announce and advance the dates it intends to begin or end military options? We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables will guide our strategy,” Trump said in what was billed as a major speech on America’s longest war.
Before the speech, speaking not for attribution, senior officials said the administration is expected to deploy around 4,000 more troops to the 8,500 already in Afghanistan.
Despite Trump’s years of withering criticism about his predecessors’ conduct of the war that has claimed more than 2,300 U.S. soldiers’ lives, and wounded more than 20,000, the president offered no details about how his plans for the war may differ from those of Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
He did say, however, that the United States would not be engaged in “nation building,” but in “killing terrorists.”
He did not estimate when the war might end, or how it might proceed.
“America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out,” Trump said. “I won’t say when we’re going to attack, but attack we will.”
As early as 2012, Trump derided the drawn-out conflict in Afghanistan. In a comment that year on Twitter he asked: “Why are we continuing to train these Afghanis who then shoot our soldiers in the back? Afghanistan is a complete waste of time. Time to come home!”
He repeated the sentiment a year later: “We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their government has zero appreciation. Let’s get out!” he tweeted.
In his Monday night speech at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, Trump said he had been “given a bad and complex hand” when he took office, but that he “fully knew” what he was getting into.
Though he may have fully known what he was getting into, the president reportedly still needed a bit of visceral coaxing from national security advisor H.R. McMaster.
The Washington Post first reported on Tuesday that long before Trump’s half-hour speech on Monday, McMaster shared photographs from 1972 of striking young Afghan women in miniskirts. McMaster shared the images with the president in hopes that it would remind him of the Western culture which once pervaded the region and offer reassurance that this influence could return again.
“These are big and intricate problems. One way or another, these problems will be solved. In the end, we will win,” he said.
Though he said he would seek greater cooperation from Pakistan, where Taliban and other U.S. enemies have sought sanctuary for years, the president’s speech focused almost entirely on military matters.
Corruption is rampant in Afghanistan, where the Taliban, factions of al Qaeda, ISIS and a host of warlords fight not just for territory but for pieces of the country’s multibillion-dollar opium and heroin business, the nation’s most valuable crop.
Trump has not yet sent a U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.