Bush and Ahmadinejad - Spot The Difference.

I continue to find it almost impossible to find any great substantive difference between the certainty of purpose displayed by George W. Bush and that of the regimes he is supposedly appalled by.

In today's Washington Post it has been reported that, "In remarks that set off a domestic firestorm, a senior cleric close to the new president suggested in January that Iranian voters were largely irrelevant because the government requires only the approval of God."

This is obviously not the viewpoint of a rational man. However, I don't find this very different from Bush making the claim, "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."

Or his assertion that God told him to invade Iraq.

So whilst Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opinion that the electorate are "irrelevant" is, rightly, seen as the ramblings of an extremist; those same ramblings put him nearer to Bush's mindset than Bush would like us to believe. After all, Bush is a man famous for not reading opinion polls, the best guide available to the thoughts of the American electorate.

Now, the fact that Bush believes that God guides his actions, gives him a certainty of purpose; a belief that he is always on the side of right and good. Indeed, for many of his supporters, this is part of his attraction. He has played to the Republican Christian base more than any President before him.

So what's the difference between him and Ahmadinejad? To be totally honest, I can't see any.