In the inevitable tell-all books from frustrated insiders attempting to salvage their careers after agreeing to work for Donald J. Trump, we're going to learn that Trump was so uninterested in military operations that he simply delegated authority to the military to do whatever it wanted. Want more troops? Sure. Want to drop an extra-special bomb? Whatever, I'm eating cake here. A risky raid into Yemen that might or might end up a disaster? Sure, pass the wine.
Seeking to end a stalemate with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has drafted proposals for a slight increase in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as well as expanded authorities to help Afghan security forces fight the group, according to a U.S. official.
President Trump will have to decide on the proposals, likely in advance of an upcoming NATO meeting.
The Pentagon will be requesting "a few thousand" additional troops. Whether it will be approved depends on whether it meshes with Team Trump's Afghanistan policy—but at no point has Team Trump spelled out an Afghanistan policy. It's been three and a half months, and there hasn't been any clear policies defined out for troops in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. The military is just winging it as they go; as far as Trump is concerned, apparently, the official policy is a big bucket of whatever.
The Trump administration two weeks ago gave the Pentagon the authority to set U.S. military troop levels in Iraq and Syria, where U.S. forces are advising and assisting Syrian rebels and the Iraqi military in the fight against ISIS. There are officially 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq and about 900 in Syria.
At the time, a U.S. defense official said the same authority had not been expanded to Afghanistan pending the administration's review of its overall strategy in that country.
You get the feeling that Trump is genuinely irritated that he has to make decisions like this. Frequently, then, he's just not making them. He's delegated troop decisions to the military itself, so that they stop bothering him, and the "review" of military operations in Afghanistan seems to be proceeding much like the "review" of refugee vetting his team insisted was the whole reason for instituting a Muslim-specific travel ban: it's gone missing.