Tom Nichols

What is it exactly we want them to do?

Sign an agreement?

Agree to sign an agreement?

Is it regime change?

How many people are we willing to kill?

How many people are we willing to lose?

What is the end state?

What is the outcome, the resolution that tells us when we're done?

It's a strategic question.

It's not a tactical question.

question about, you know, how to fight, you know, with small groups of planes or men or tanks.

It's not an operational question.

It's not about how to move large military assets around and achieve objectives in the theater.

It's a strategic question.

And that is where that's what generals and admirals are supposed to be thinking about.

And working with the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council and the State Department and everybody else to give the president good advice and especially to get clarity from the president about what it is we're supposed to be doing.

We teach military officers in war colleges, ends, ways, means.

Strategy is a dance among these things.

What's really worrisome, and again, going back to that notional general or admiral in the Pentagon,

They have to be thinking, the president hasn't made this case to Congress.