By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star Editorial columnist

We've seen this before, and we will see it again: American officials warning that Afghanistan is a problem.

The answer, sadly, is that the answers aren't in more troops, or better tactics. The answers are found in history: Failure is inevitable.

The Washington Post this weekend got ahold of a report by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man in charge of efforts there. In it, he said: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term ... risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

He went on to note that "inadequate resources will likely result in failure." And he added: "Additional resources are required..." or the U.S. and NATO risk "a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."

He's hardly the first military leader to reach that conclusion. It's easy to go back to Alexander the Great, and the Khans, among the long line of folks who failed to hold this place. There's a reason it's nickname is "The Graveyard of Empires."

But I had the chance to sit down a couple years ago with former Soviet officers at a club in Moscow (a club in which the portrait of Joe Stalin still gets top billing, by the way) and chat about what to expect in Central Asia.

They were not encouraging.

Retired Gen. Victor Yermakov was in charge of Soviet 40th army's efforts around Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. At the time, I wrtoe that "he couldn't decide whether to shake his head or scream when he hears talk about how to ... control Afghanistan."

"All the future holds for American forces there are dead soldiers, and they will die for nothing," he said then. He used his own experience as a lesson, saying he'd been impressed by U.S. efforts in his old stomping ground: "Gaining control of Tora Bora is a great accomplishment. I should know. I did it three times."

He then added, genuinely sad while thinking about soldiers now trying to repeat his efforts back then: "Unfortunately, the second I turned my back on the place, I needed to conquer it again. It is the same now. It will never change."

Not that he says the Russians were willing to believe the fate of the many who came before meant anything to their efforts. The United States, he said, will join the long list of great nations who have learned their own lesson: "Every nation believes it is more clever than those who came before."

Retired Soviet Capt. Vladimir Vshivtsev was blinded by an improvised roadside bomb 20 years ago in Afghanistan.

"They're fighting the same war again," he said. "Sure, the political stuff is different, but the military result is going to be the same: failure."

There's another old saying that seems to apply: Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

In the American mind, Afghanistan and iraq are linked. We've seen some improvements and assumed they can be transferred to the other far away place.

But remember, we're overseeing the rebuilding of what was a working (if not pleasant, at least working) society in Iraq. Iraq, after all, is a nation with a tradition of education, natural resources, and a history of success.

In Afghanistan, we're building from scratch. In Iraq, we know what victory looks like. No one has any idea what it might look like in Afghanistan.

The only path to victory in Afghanistan is setting the bar very low. Expecting long lasting changes is the path to long lasting war and occupation.