THE BEAR VS THE UNICORN RIDER:

The peacenik gets a lesson (Wesley Pruden, 10/16/09, Washington Times)

It's never easy to be a friend of America, and Mr. Obama is making it impossible to be one.

He got a humiliating reminder of reality this week when the Russians, to whom he had paid such humble obeisance, gave him a hard slap across the face, just to remind him who he is and who is meant to be in charge of the world. Mr. Obama expected to get something when he blew off Poland and the Czech Republic, which had agreed to host NATO missile sites at considerable cost and risk, being close neighbors of the Russians.

What he thought he got was an implicit understanding that Russia recognizes the danger of the Iranian nuclear bomb, that it would change the power equation in the Middle East. Russia would join the West in imposing sanctions tough enough to get the attention of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But not so fast. It's not as if the Russians really meant it. Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister and an old KGB operative who is obviously still in charge of everything important in Moscow, warned "major powers" - diplomatic softspeak for "the United States" - against trying to intimidate Iran into behaving itself. He said talk of new sanctions against the Islamic republic are "premature." This is diplomatic realspeak for "not now and not ever."