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Trump's Afghanistan speech: A make or break moment?
President may announce troop surge in 'most important address yet'
Donald Trump will unveil his Afghanistan strategy in his first major national security address to the nation tonight and it's likely to include sending thousands of additional troops there.
While the White House has refused to comment publicly on details of the long-awaited strategy, the Los Angeles Times says Trump is expected to deploy 4,000 more US troops for counter-terrorism missions and to advise Afghan military officers.
The President's address comes after "months of bitter internal debates" by his national security team, the paper reports.
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"Some in the administration, including recently ousted strategic advisor Steve Bannon, questioned the goal of sending more Americans into a war that has dragged on for 16 years," the Los Angeles Times adds.
Trump has argued against American military intervention and called for the US to withdraw from Afghanistan.
If reports of a troop surge prove accurate, the President "will be pursuing a strategy that breaks sharply from his public statements dating back more than six years," says Think Progress, run by the policy institute Center for American Progress Action Fund.
There are 8,400 US and 5,000 NATO troops supporting Afghan security forces in the fight against the Taliban, Islamic State and other militant groups.
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The "potential escalation" of the nation's longest-running war comes when Trump's political standing is "deeply compromised," CNN reports. The President is still dealing with the political fallout from his inflammatory suggestion that left-wing protesters shared the blame for the deadly violence in Charlottesville.
Tonight's speech allows Trump to "leverage the symbolism of his office to stabilise a presidency that has threatened to spin out of control over the last two weeks," CNN reports.
It will also give Trump the opportunity "to hit the reset button" on his role as a statesman after "weeks of saber-rattling with North Korea that seemed to put the US on the brink of a nuclear conflict," Bloomberg reports.
