Hey guys,
I’m not one that knows every little detail about the history of Russia’s relationship with its neighbors, but I found this on Yahoo news the other day and I wanted to know what people think from a Latvian perspective....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070714/ap_on_re_eu/russia_arms_control_treaty_24

I know things will work themselves out in a diplomatic manner, but my first knee-jerk reaction was fear for my friends and in-laws in Latvia if things someday escalated.  We know Putin, to put it nicely, doesn’t really care too much for the Baltics and I fear that if Russia got a big head again and decided to make war, that would be the first place they would go. 
After visiting the Occupation Museum in Riga, I can safely say at first I was proud at the stance the U.S. and others made to condemn the actions of Stalin after WWII, but then I thought about it and became ashamed that we did nothing BUT condemn it.  What makes me more ashamed as an American, is that if it happened again today the same stance would be taken.  Would NATO fight to save the Baltics?  Would they be too scared of Russia to do anything?  This kind of nags at me when I read news like this.  I spent 8 years in the US Army, spent a year in Iraq, and I think that a more nobler fight would be to save already democratic countries from collapse rather than try to build one from scratch.  (That doesn’t mean I am against the war in Iraq by the way, so be easy on me:)

Dave

Think nothing of it....................
Kazha will probably pit in his shants.........LOL

gobdav wants us to be easy on him for not being against the war in Iraq.

Sorry, but if you are not against that war, then, in my humble opinion, to put it very diplomatically, your head needs to be yanked off.

As far as V.Putin’s decision to distance himself from G.W.Bush & Co.’s hypocritical War of the Willing to stamp out WMD, in my humble opinion it has something to do with G.W.Bush gazing into his eyes during the Chechnya debacle and announcing that he sees a soul-mate deep inside there. (V.Putin can’t stand homosexuals any more than he can stand the Mutts of Lalaluluboggwoggistan.)

Tarmo the Nordic {sic} a.k.a. Gelge W. Twigg {sic} a.k.a. El Subcommandante {sic} a.k.a. You Heathen Rabbi {sic} a.k.a. Latvian Trimdie at Natick Mall {sic} a.k.a. Your Parrot {sic} a.k.a. Exlalaluluboggwoggistani Animalized Muttsie {sic} a.k.a. Wasted Bandwidth {sic}

Ok, so the original post was about what people thought of RUSSIA’s relations with the WEST, not America’s relations with Iraq. 

Juris Z, your post really doesn’t make sense at all and call me crazy, but where have I heard of people “yanking off heads” of others for not agreeing with their views?  You’re not one of those, now are you?

Crazy gobdav asked me to call him crazy:

< ...call me crazy, but where have I heard of people “yanking off heads” of others for not agreeing with their views?  You’re not one of those, now are you?>

If you would from time to time read the news as provided by the free press of the USA, you would hear of people “yanking off heads” of others for not agreeing with their war-mongering views. No, I am not a pacifist. If I had a president who had the balls to ask me to yank your head off for the sake of his “principle”, I would be more than happy to oblige.

Tarmo the Nordic {sic} a.k.a. Gelge W. Twigg {sic} a.k.a. El Subcommandante {sic} a.k.a. You Heathen Rabbi {sic} a.k.a. Latvian Trimdie at Natick Mall {sic} a.k.a. RegionalMook {sic) a.k.a. Your Parrot {sic} a.k.a. Exlalaluluboggwoggistani Animalized Muttsie {sic} a.k.a. Wasted Bandwidth {sic}

It’s no credit to anyone. Russia became an empire before it became a nation, and the poor krievi simply have no experience of being a normal nation. They can’t conceive of having no hegemonic status and still being respected--and since they continue to worry that the rest of the world thinks of them as backward, they feel obliged to prove that they can bully their neighbors.

I don’t know whether Vlad P. really thinks those anti-missile radars are a threat, but most Russians are quite prepared to see tëmnye sily in anything of this sort. And Bush insists that Bin Laden will get us if we don’t stick the damned things in Poland and CZ--they look to me like an unworkable solution to a non-existent problem, and Twiggy’s obsession with Iraq is relevant after all: no one would have thought of these installations, even after 9/11, if we hadn’t created a terrorist free-for-all in Iraq.

Neither bozo will back down. Both are lame ducks, unless Vlad has some way up his sleeve to evade the constitution; in any case, they don’t have to worry about reelection. In the USA, at least there is widespread disillusionment with Dub the Shrub (why more people didn’t see through him in 2004 is not easy to explain, but at last it is happening). The Russians, on the other hand, love Vlad, and happily believe all the crap the unfree media throw at them. But then, so do a lot of Western journalists and their readers.

Stephen