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It's basically a goal. it's the goal to try to rely on the generals, let them decide how many troops are needed, to delegate authority to the battlefield commanders. as you saw yourself in mosul, they are calling in air strikes. the iraqis are calling in air strikes. this has led to a much faster pace. the president's constant refrain as you saw in the piece is he wants to deliver on that campaign promise of defeating isis. and he seems committed to it, leaving the strategy, as i say, completely up to the generals, up to mattis and up to mcmaster, the national security adviser. richard? >> so ...

Responsibility. >> richard, the strategy is really not a strategy. it's basically a goal. it's the goal to try to rely on the generals, let them decide how many troops are needed, to delegate authority to the battlefield commanders. as you saw yourself in mosul, they are calling in air strikes. the iraqis are calling in air strikes. this has led to a much faster pace. the president's constant refrain as you saw in the piece is he wants to deliver on that campaign promise of defeating isis. and he seems committed to it, leaving the strategy, as i say, completely up to the generals, up to mattis...

Chief, and he has that responsibility. >> richard, the strategy is really not a strategy. it's basically a goal. it's the goal to try to rely on the generals, let them decide how many troops are needed, to delegate authority to the battlefield commanders. as you saw yourself in mosul, they are calling in air strikes. the iraqis are calling in air strikes. this has led to a much faster pace. the president's constant refrain as you saw in the piece is he wants to deliver on that campaign promise of defeating isis. and he seems committed to it, leaving the strategy, as i say, completely up to the...

President to duck responsibility from controversial decisions. so let's talk about it with the lieutenant colonel rick francona, a cnn military analyst. lieutenant colonel, thank you and good to see you. the most recent example i want to point out of this is giving defense secretary james mattis, recently retired four star generally, the power to set troops in afghanistan. are military members comfortable with that kind of power? are you comfortable with that? >> actually, i'm not. thif the president is the ultimate -- has the ultimate responsibility for determining troop levels. he can take a...

Up. thousands of troops are pulled out. 4,000 or so we'll go back in but is that enough? it doesn't necessarily get the volume of u.s. soldiers back in afghanistan in order to fight the growing threat there. >> i think the question is a little bit less than how many we are sending and more so how will they be utilized? obama essentially just kicked the can for years on afghanistan and wanted to pull out, we have about 9800 troops there. the reality is under obama, those troops had a very strict rule of engagement. they couldn't engage the enemy the way they were trained to do in a way that cou...