Retired Gen. Pavel Grachev, who spent two tours in Afghanistan, including commanding an airborne division, had a tone somewhere between disbelief and shock when he discussed the news of Obama's troop buildup.

"I believed as sincerely as American officers do now that we were fighting there to help make our country safer," said Grachev, who later became defense minister and sent in Russian units to quell Chechnya during the 1990s, a campaign that also ended in disaster. "After the war, as a politician, I could see this war had been pointless."

That said, Grachev offered some advice: Post soldiers to guard road projects and irrigation systems, and send in an army of engineers, doctors, mining...

Retired Gen. Pavel Grachev, who spent two tours in Afghanistan, including commanding an airborne division, had a tone somewhere between disbelief and shock when he discussed the news of Obama's troop buildup.

"I believed as sincerely as American officers do now that we were fighting there to help make our country safer," said Grachev, who later became defense minister and sent in Russian units to quell Chechnya during the 1990s, a campaign that also ended in disaster. "After the war, as a politician, I could see this war had been pointless."

That said, Grachev offered some advice: Post soldiers to guard road projects and irrigation systems, and send in an army of engineers, doctors, mining experts and construction advisers.

Pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure would be a lot more productive than firefights in far-flung villages.

"You have to understand that in the economic sphere, Afghanistan is now at a stage lower than the Middle Ages."
That, Grachev said, is a commander's nightmare; it gives insurgents and terrorists a population that sees little reason to support the Kabul government or its Western backers. The hardened military man insisted that instead of bombs, "It is urgently necessary to create a comprehensive road network!"

Retired Gen. Viktor Yermakov agreed. He led the Soviet Union's 40th Army in Afghanistan during the early 1980s, and he said that his staff officers came to realize that they simply weren't going to win the war by military means.

"But unfortunately it was too late,We had to answer fire. When we were attacked, we attacked with all of our might."

His soldiers were in a battlefield, caught in a cycle of attack and counterattack with an enemy that usually slipped away by the time the artillery shells rained down. There was no military solution, but he had a war to fight.

For the Americans, Yermakov said, it probably will become a familiar story.