In meeting after meeting with his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, this spring and summer, President Trump angrily hammered home two questions:

He wanted to know why the U.S. military wasn’t winning in Afghanistan, and he asked, repeatedly, why, after more than 16 years of war, the United States was still stuck there. (…)

“H.R. heard the first question and seized on it,” said a senior White House official who is close to McMaster. “But he never heard, or didn’t want to hear, the president’s second question.”