This wasn't a "strategy", it is doing something more than nothing. Just enough to keep the things ticking over.

The mistake was going in to the place all those years ago. And who knew that going into Afghanistan was a problem? Apart from every other empire that went in there exchanged a vast amount of money for... very little.

If Trump were any sort of business man, when considering investment one does not worry about what has already been spent, just the cost and benefits of choices.

Yes, the military hates loosing - the Marines more than most. But that is why they are not in charge of themselves.

Destroying terrorist organisations and insurgencies rarely works (the USSR managed to do so in Latvia / Estonia) and in a country the size of Afghanistan with borders and clans as porous as they are? Without every bordering country pressing in with serious resources there's no point even bothering.