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Over at RealClearPolitics, John McIntyre points out some of the eerie similarities as well as differences between Ahmadinejad and Hitler, following the Wallace interview:

I found his answers to Wallace extremely cunning, crafty and dangerous. You can almost hear Hitler spouting out "grievances" of the Sudentland Germans and the Germans in Danzig when you hear Ahmadinejad take up for the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iraqis. Granted, Hitler controlled one of the most powerful and advanced societies in the world by the late-1930's, and Ahmadinejad's Iran is far lower on the scale as a threat to project force. However, Ahmadinejad is making a play in many ways to speak for the world's one billion "aggrieved" Muslims, where Hitler only professed to speak on behalf of a mere 100 million Germans.

I'd just like to add a few thoughts. Firstly, however large the German military was by the late 1930s, it must be said that WW II was still a conventional war. As we have seen in both Israel vs. Hezbollah and the U.S. vs. the Iraqi insurgency, terrorist groups that fight asymmetrically and hide among civilians are hard to defeat even with a far superior military. The continental U.S. was never attacked during WW II, but in this war our cities have been hit and our civilians remain threatened (and Iran reportedly has thousands of suicide bombers at its disposal). Secondly, Hitler never acquired a nuclear weapon, whereas Ahmadinejad will acquire one if we continue to put our faith in the U.N. and the IAEA. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, America was culturally different in WW II once the actual threat materialized. We were united behind a common cause and the media was pro-American. Today, we have an adversarial media that does PR for our foes while a good chunk of the population thinks our president is more of a threat to peace than the people who are trying to kill us.

topics:
Military, Iraq, Iran, Israel