Reporting from the HQ of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith

As if you couldn’t predict what opinions Spiegel would cherry-pick as being a “unanimity” of opinion in the German press without even knowing what the issue is, we find a strange dichotomous set of articles on their website appearing simultaneously.

On one hand, they honor Sir Winston Churchill for defying a dictator.

A Man Who Loved Danger and Sought Out Adventure

Churchill had killed people in battle as a young man, but he was not particularly struck by the experience. "Nothing in history was ever settled except by wars," the bellicose Churchill believed. He loved danger and sought out adventure. Even when he was in his sixties, as prime minister, he would stand on the roof of a government building in London during German air raids to observe the murderous spectacle from above, while his cabinet ministers fled into the bomb shelters.

And it was good... On the other we find vilification of George Bush for defying a dictator. They start channeling Benno Ohnesorg again, and any other dead flunky that can prop up their argument.

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"The Anglo-American war in Iraq and the subsequent occupation was a severe breach of international law. The collected justifications by the Bush and Blair governments for the war were lies from the beginning. A later attempted justification was the deposing of Saddam Hussein, a dictator who the West and the Soviet Union had backed in the late 70s and armed for his war against the Islamic revolutionary regime in neigboring [sic] Iran."

Indeed...

Hitler berated his rival as a "lunatic," "paralytic" and "world arsonist." Churchill shot back, calling Hitler a "wicked man," the "monstrous product of former wrongs and shame" and said that "Europe will not yield itself to Hitler's gospel of hatred." It soon became clear that the loser in this duel would pay with his life.

Much as the German press did of President George Bush, but then again, who’s to make comparison, other than, say, unceasing irrelevant ones to the Vietnam War, which in any event was a proxy war with the Chinese that the press at that time refused to see.

But we all know that they’re too sophisticated, too intelligent, too worldly to make that sort of shallow comparison.