[starfish923]

The Cossacks were originally sent south by the Czars to settle the North Caucasus specifically to provide an armed buffer against the (muslim) Turks. They smile when you compare our Cowboys and Indians vs. their Cossacks and Turks and say the only real similarity was that both groups generally did their work on horseback.

The Cossacks were used more than once by the Czars to settle, er, problems.

No one with an ounce of knowledge about American history would make the comparison.
Neither cowboys nor Indians had that function.
The cowboys were working cattle men.
The Indians were Stone Age folks on their way out, who had made war on their own for thousands of years. Meeting ANY Iron Age visitors spelled doom for the once-isolated Indians. What the diseases of the outside world didn't do, the guns of the Iron Age did.
The Indians didn't even SEE a horse until Cortez and the Spaniards introduced them to the New World in 1519.....and it took a hundred years or so for the horse to breed and spread so that SOME Indians could afford them. And it took another hundred years or so for the Indians to become experts with them.
Too late for the Indians anyway.

It also shows that there is no knowledge of either Turks or Cossacks. Only ignorance.
Smile.

[katana]

Who's ignorant? I agree with you and was just pointing out that the Russians have been holding the line against aggressive Islam for centuries.

The Cossack / Cowboy comment came from the time another American member of a group I was with in Krasnodar, the Kuban Region alluded to some similarities between the two and the reaction of our Russian hosts (all of whom claimed to be of Cossack stock) was not positive. I think "herdsmen vs. soldiers" was the phrase they used.

Smile back at ya.

[adam_az]

"The Indians didn't even SEE a horse until Cortez and the Spaniards introduced them to the New World in 1519"

There used to be horselike critters in North America - the Indians ate them all.

[Americanexpat]

We are going to be playing cowboys and Muslims pretty soon right here.

Notice how these Chechen's like to attack schools and kill innocent children? Another reason why our intelligence services need to keep hammering away at terrorists including the home grown variety.