Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week as he prepares to take command of U.S. wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The Marine Corps general, who briefly served as a Pentagon spokesman this year, will formally sit down Tuesday before Senate Armed Services Committee lawmakers to testify on his nomination to head U.S. Central Command. He is likely to face questions about the new year-old Afghanistan strategy and other grinding conflicts such as Syria.
Senators are considering McKenzie, who previously led all Marines under the command, amid more grim news from Afghanistan, America’s longest war. That includes three U.S. special operators killed by a roadside bomb and another by friendly fire.
A string of recent incidents, including the attempted assassination of the U.S. commander in the country, have begged the question of whether President Trump’s strategy of surging thousands of troops to help Afghan forces pound the Taliban into peace talks is working.
“The figures are on [the Afghans’] side in terms of de-escalating, but not to my satisfaction, not to the satisfaction of most of the American people,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the Armed Services Committee chairman. “So the ultimate decision should be military decision as to the progress they’re making and does that progress justify our presence.”
McKenzie, who is almost certain to be confirmed, will take over from retiring CENTCOM commander Gen. Joseph Votel and head up a theater with two active wars and numerous counterterrorism operations. In Afghanistan, the commander on the ground is Gen. Scott Miller, who narrowly survived a Taliban insider attack in October that killed two senior Afghan officials.
The territory is known to McKenzie. He was deployed to Kabul in 2009 as a deputy in the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, and was put in charge of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command in 2014.
In between those assignments, McKenzie directed strategy and policy at CENTCOM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump reluctantly sided with his advisers on a new Afghanistan strategy last year and signed off on sending thousands more troops to reinforce the Afghan army and police efforts against the Taliban. The tribal fundamentalist group has been fighting a pitched civil war in the country since before the U.S. invaded in 2001 to kill or capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
As the Taliban has ratcheted up violence this year, U.S. air power has also increased, with more bombs, missiles and other munitions fired — especially in the past three months, the most in any other year since 2013, according to newly released Air Force figures.
On Tuesday, two Army Green Berets and an Air Force combat controller were killed in a roadside bombing claimed by the Taliban in Ghazni, where the U.S. and Afghans battled for days over the summer to repel a siege by Tabliban forces. An Army Ranger was accidentally killed over the weekend by an Afghan ally during a firefight with al Qaeda in western Afghanistan.
The Trump administration aims for a peace agreement with the Taliban to end the war, now in its 18th year, but there is scant evidence so far that will happen.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he believes the peace process is “picking up momentum.” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has reportedly put together a team of negotiators in hopes of Taliban talks, and the administration has taken the unusual step of meeting directly with the group in recent months.
“It’d be nice if the Taliban would get in line with the reconciliation effort and stop murdering their own people, but we’ll keep at it,” Mattis said.
