Mr. Mattis has acknowledged to Congress that the United States-led coalition is “not winning” in Afghanistan. It is not at all clear that adding 5,000 more troops — a roughly 50 percent increase over the current troop level of 9,800 — can make a difference, especially when the administration has yet to confront the basic problem of ensuring public safety and the larger political and economic issues that must be part of a comprehensive strategy to resolve the conflict.
What such a decision would do is reverse the drawdown President Barack Obama put in place and set a new policy of expanding involvement in a war that has already dragged on for 16 years, cost thousands of American and Afghan lives and consumed billions of dollars.
Military commanders chafed under Mr. Obama’s tight controls on troop deployments and war making, which some of them saw as micromanagement. Even so, commanders in chief cannot subcontract their most sacred duties; what the United States faces at this moment is not some routine tactical maneuver or choice. It is what to do about America’s longest war. That is, at bottom, Mr. Trump’s responsibility, and at the moment the nation has no idea what he thinks or where he is headed.
