Theland: You�ve made an excellent point. Ahmadinejad seems to be in a quandary over which role he should assume, either that of Sodom or Gomorrah. I was based in the Middle East during the reign of Reza Pahlavi, where I commuted between Bahrain, Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad. It was heart breaking to see the freedoms of so many erode with such ferocity as Pahlavi�s brutal fisted rule collapsed. Today, the country, perhaps thankfully, has two powerful minds � one of a moderate stance, the other, as we repeatedly see in the media, of an extremist stance. Keep in mind that much of what we see in the media is highly orchestrated and often among people of heavily influenced minds.
If I step back from it all, which having lived within so many cultures, it is difficult to do at times, I see Vladimir Putin almost mirroring the behaviour of Nikita Khrushchev and Ahmadinejad, trying not to be out-performed, mirroring those behaviours in dealing with George W Bush. Bush, not being known for his oratory skills, occasionally speaks in a way that becomes virtually impossible to translate into other languages as anything but acerbic, brazen and abrupt. Consequently, it appears in the media as a coterie of ill-behaved leaders. And to compound it, the venerable Mr Ahmadinejad didn�t do his cause any favours when he recently addressed the students of Columbia University.
Fr Bill