buddy,

Yeah, it reminds me of the existential angst around invading Iraq. Is this exactly what Osama wants us to do? Thanks to Dubya’s fortitude it looks like standing and doing the right thing creates its own rewards.

***

This turn of events really grieves me. I have always been enthralled with the romantic notion of the Cossacks. No, not the Tsar’s policemen, but the wild men of the steppes. Their very name, kazak, means “free” in Turkish. They took their name and their horseback culture from the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan. They refused to bow down to the Mongols and lost themselves in the sea of grass. One of the best Soviet novels, “And Quiet Flows the Don,” (sadly, but appropriately, plagiarized by Chekist Mikhail Sholokhov from an unknown Don Cossack captain), is the story of the tragedies of a Don Cossack village during the Russian civil war. Great book!
It breaks my heart to see these degraded Cossack counterfeits as Volodya’s ethnic cleansers.