Top U.S. Military Commander in Afghanistan Finally Gets His Wish by Pamela Constable - Washington Post
For months, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., made the case for an expanded U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, telling skeptics that the faltering Afghan war was an urgent matter of American security, that the struggling Afghan government was a reliable partner, and that its defense forces just needed more time and U.S. support to become self-sufficient.
Last week, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan finally got his wish.
President Trump, who once advocated abandoning Afghanistan and in recent months questioned the fundamental premises of America’s costly 16-year military involvement here, has now publicly committed himself to a strategy that hews closely to the military plan Nicholson and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani hammered out in dozens of meetings this spring and summer.
Now, the burden will be on Nicholson, 61, a boyish-looking four-star general who has spent more time in Afghanistan than any other senior commander, to deliver on what many observers say may be an impossible mission. Its aim is to help Afghan forces turn around a stalemated conflict with the aid of a few thousand extra advisory troops — something his predecessors failed to do with more than 100,000 combat troops at the war’s peak…