Worse, the Pentagon all but concedes that there just aren’t any good ideas anymore on how to escape from Afghanistan with anything resembling a win. “Trump pointed to maps showing the Taliban gaining ground,” NBC News reported, citing a senior administration official. Defense Secretary James Mattis “responded to the president by saying the U.S. is losing because it doesn’t have the strategy it needs.” If it was up to Trump personally to prepare himself for the peril of trying to govern with neither party establishment behind him, how could any president prepare for an institutional failure so grand in scope?

Truth be told, Afghanistan has become a veritable beacon for zombie institutions and schools of thought. Our military planners aren’t the only ones reduced to shambling weakly ahead into the fog. Semi-embattled nationalist adviser Stephen Bannon wants Trump to give a hearing to Erik Prince, whose concept for breaking the Afghan curse involves removing U.S. troops and replacing them with privately contracted soldiers and airmen. But the merits of such a mercenary plan, whatever they are, will probably never be tested. While the generals, and a big chunk of voters, see it as an intolerable challenge to the turf and the honor of the U.S. military, neither the brass nor the electorate will allow themselves to imagine that the luxury of choice is far in the rear-view.