In Soviet-Era Afghan Assessment, an Old, or Enduring, Truth? Many years into the war in Afghanistan, an officer declares that the fight is going badly, that Afghan soldiers are not up to the job and that top military and political leaders are sugar-coating a grim situation. That could describe Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis of the Army, who returned from his second Afghan deployment and set off an intense debate last week by declaring in an article in Armed Forces Journal that he had "witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level" and calling on top commanders to begin "telling the truth." Colonel Davis also wrote a longer unclassified report elaborating on his views and delivered it to members of Congress and the Defense Department's inspector general. But the description might also apply to a Soviet colonel, Kim Tsagolov, who in August 1987 expressed strikingly parallel views about the faltering Soviet occupation, then eight years old. Colonel Tsagolov, who had earned a doctorate, expressed himself in the cautious, stilted jargon of Marxism-Leninism. He did not make his critique public; rather, he sent a long letter to the Soviet defense minister, Dmitry Yazov. He would speak publicly the next year in an interview with magazine Ogonyok and be expelled from the army as a result. Many American military officials reject facile parallels between the Soviet and American experiences in Afghanistan, saying the Soviet goal was the brutal imposition of a Marxist puppet state, while the American aim has been to build and support a democratic order. But both superpowers found themselves mired in a fight against guerrilla forces who claimed to be devout Muslims fighting infidel invaders; some of the old-timers in today's Taliban fought as young men with the anti-Soviet mujahedeen of the 1980s. And it is hard to miss the similarities in the complaints of Colonel Tsagolov and Colonel Davis. "We should honestly admit that our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results," Colonel Tsagolov wrote in his August 13, 1987 letter. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result - stabilization of the military-political situation in the country. He referred to "the absence of any serious success" and concluded that "the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means only." Today, after more than a decade of the American-led war in Afghanistan, that last phrase has become a refrain for the Obama administration. Drawing parallels between the Soviet and American (and British, for that matter) experiences in Afghanistan is a popular parlor game, one that can be played on the cheap or with great thought. So what do At War readers think? Is history repeating itself as the United States draws down its troops after a decade in Afghanistan? Or are the differences between Soviet and American goals and methods so profound as to make the comparison misleading? The full text of Colonel Tsagolov's letter of a quarter-century ago, in English translation, is on the site of the National Security Archive at George Washington University here.