Stardate 20030309.1000

(On Screen): Tu Quoque is one of those forms of cheating in political argument. It means that any criticism made of you, or that you potentially think may be made against you, you make against your opponent. The term is Latin for "You, too!". It doesn't matter whether it makes any sense at all, the idea is to muddy the waters.

These days, the anti-war movement has been using a special form of it: Bush Quoque. (No doubt I've loused up the Latin.) "Bush, too!" Whatever bad anyone else has done, Bush is worse. For instance, one of those "clever" signs being carried around at anti-war protests said something like "At least Saddam was elected" (unanimously!), being a reference to the now-standard left-wing claim that the 2000 election was stolen. There are the "Bush is a Nazi" signs.

And so it is that we encounter the latest manifestation of "Bush, Too!"

A German junior minister said on Sunday the United States was behaving like a dictator over the Iraq crisis, a statement likely to put relations between Washington and Berlin under further strain.

"The Americans look more and more like dictators with their unilateral decisions," Walter Kolbow, junior minister in the Defense Ministry, was quoted as saying in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. ...

Kolbow also said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a dangerous dictator who oppressed his people. "He's the best monitored dictator that I know of," Kolbow was quoted telling the rally.

Yeah, Saddam's a dictator, but so is Bush.

While we're at it, let's also toss in a healthy dose of Newspeak, shall we? What he's saying is that America's unwillingness to toe the line is dictatorship. Our willingness to make our own decisions and not buckle under to what others tell us to do makes us dictators.

Unilateralism is Dictatorship. Sounds like something right out of Orwell. If you don't do what we say, you're a dictator. (We, of course, are not dictators simply because we're trying to order you around.)

For instance, in Iraq we're not telling the Germans that they have to fight alongside us. We're not telling the French that, either. (I think there would be little enthusiasm for either, in fact, amongst American troops and commanders.) What we're saying is that we're going to fight ourselves. The Germans and the French are saying "we don't want to fight, and we don't want you to fight either."

That means we're the dictators. Did I miss something in there?