12 JAN 2003 > Return to Opinions Index
NATO invitation presents new obligations
By JURIS MAZUTIS

We cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefits we receive must be rendered again line for line, deed for deed, to somebody.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1836

"...It is also not coincidence that Mr. Putin has restored the red star symbol to his army, the Soviet hymn to official occasions, and the statue of Feliks Dzershinsky, founder of the Cheka (later the KGB), in Lubyanka Square. Together with muzzling of the media, these steps signal regression into strong man rule. Then, as though the rest of us have no memory, Mr. Putin talks about "respecting Soviet achievements." Those include the horrors of the Gulag, for which no one has been held accountable. Can he not at least find the moral backbone to set the historical record straight for his own people? No. He will protect his KGB comrades, above all. This "partner" has not renounced a dangerous agenda. One media moment, in which President George Bush "looked into his soul" and "found a good man," does not reassure us. Mr. Putin must have been smirking all the way back to the Kremlin.