Posted on 04/29/2007 10:24:57 AM PDT by RWR8189
AS I walked behind Boris Yeltsin’s coffin at Novodevichy Cemetery on Wednesday, I found myself thinking about the man I worked with closely for nearly eight years and the role he played in changing the world, mostly for the better.
Every time I met with him, Mr. Yeltsin left no doubt that he had two objectives above all others. The first was to make sure that the Russian people never again had to live under communism, or autocratic ultranationalism. The second was to form a solid, lasting partnership between a democratic Russia and the West.
On the big issues that came up between us, Mr. Yeltsin and I had our differences, and his position was often made more difficult by economic problems and political pressures. But at the end of the day, he almost always did the right thing. He insisted on respecting Russia’s borders with the other old Soviet republics. That meant standing up to Russian nationalists who might have plunged the former Soviet Union into the kind of chaos that engulfed Yugoslavia.
He made the compromises necessary to get Ukraine, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. He pulled Russian troops out of the Baltic states. He made Russia part of the diplomatic solution to the crises in Bosnia and Kosovo. And much as he opposed the enlargement of NATO, he accepted the right of Central European states to join the alliance and signed a cooperation agreement between Russia and the alliance.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Clinton didnt write this..
Nice tribute, but as you point out, Clinton could have mentioned himself a little less.
He wrote at least the first paragraph - it's all about him: I, I, I, I, etc.
True, but the “Boris the Fighter” title is a play on “Boris the Spider”, a Who song. I would be surprised if Clinton knew it..
Unfortunately, the Clintonistas blew their chance to help bring market reforms to line their own pockets. This guy should be ashamed to show his face in public.
I agree. The only reflection of clinton’s style is the constant use of the word “I.” The rest of it was assembled by some rather pedantic ghostwriter/hack, who put it rather thoroughly in the first person.
Clinton backed Boris over true Democratic reform. This opened the door for Putin’s murderous hold on power.
I think we should all be thankful for both Gorby and Boris.
In 1982 if anyone would have predicted that the USSR would disappear without major bloodshed, he would have been laughed out of town.
I believe we sometimes forget how lucky the world was that the disintegration of a major nuclear power occurred without those weapons being used.
Almost nobody foresaw it, most notably the Soviet leaders themselves.
He used the first person singular less than half a dozen times-at least, in the excerpted portion of this op-ed-for Bubba that’s an improvement.
Obviously .. because he would have bragged about their drunken parties - of which there were many.
And .. somebody neglected to mention that it was when Boris was in power that Clinton sent algore to Moscow with a TREATY to sign - WITHOUT THE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF CONGRESS - who has the power to “advise and consent” in such treaties .. and the congress DID NOTHING ABOUT IT.
Not sure which treaty you're talking about or what you're getting at -- it's the normal course of events for the Executive branch to negotiate treaties, and for the Senate to advise and consent by voting to ratify or not. That practice was begun not by Clinton, but by Washington.
Count the “I’s” and the “Me’s and “Us’s”!!! It’s always ALL about HIM!!
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.—Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
Well .. whether you remember it or not .. I remember the incident. Algore went to Moscow without ANYBODY’S knowledge except Clinton. THAT IS NOT HOW YOU NEGOTIATE TREATIES with other countries.
A couple of Senators complained .. but the drive-by buried it.
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