Round here, we are not very keen on the notion of banning words of any kind. The time has come to make an exception. The following words should be banned henceforth from political discourse: "Hitler" and "Nazi."

This would not apply to discussion of German history in the years up to 1945. That is not the problem. The problem is the incessant appearance of the words as a resort to winning arguments about modern politics. Their use (along with that of "fascist") has always been a ploy of the intellectually dishonest. At rock-bottom they are tools for inductive reasoning: "I like dogs." "Hitler liked dogs. You're a Nazi, then!" Since the Iraq dispute began, mild overuse has turned to plague, and both sides have been as bad as each other.

Let's be clear about this. Saddam Hussein is not Hitler, as hysterical Americans keep claiming. The charges of external violence are 12 years old. There is no coherent evidence that he had any plans (at least before the US began goading him) for more adventures, merely that he is obsessed with stockpiling weaponry, a charge that applies equally to the Pentagon. Far from seeking global or regional domination, he only dominates portions of Iraq.

George Bush is not Hitler. The former German justice minister's comparison was absurd; John Pilger's rants are increasingly ludicrous. Tony Blair is not Hitler either. Those who should note this are not so much anti-war campaigners as countryside marchers. "Hitler 1936. Blair 2002," said one banner. If there were a shred of sense in this analogy, hunting would have been banned five years ago, whereas in fact Blair has "crawfished" about like anything trying to avoid it.

Israel, a democratic state, is not "the mirror image of Nazism," as claimed by Michael Sinnott, professor of "paper science" (paper-thin arguments, more like), at Umist. Those who criticise Israel for its expansionism, oppression and sheer thick-headedness are not Nazis either, nor necessarily anti-semites. An American attack on Iraq would not be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, as claimed by a Canadian MP, Bonnie Brown. After all, this is going to be the most heavily trailed sneak attack in history.

On the other hand, Colin Powell is not Neville Chamberlain, as claimed by the rightwing American pundit Frank Gaffney. Nor is Kofi Annan. Those who believe an attack on Iraq to be counter-productive in terms of American interests are not appeasers. Tony Blair should not compare, as he did in Blackpool, his mysterious liaison with George Bush with the second world war alliance. And most emphatically, Bush is not Churchill, as he impertinently imagines.

I had thought that the second world war addiction was a peculiarly British phenomenon, a drug we reached for because we have achieved damn all as a nation ever since. If anything, it seems worse in the US, a country where an education in world history consists of little more than learning the lines:

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Yet week after week I am overwhelmed with emails from Americans crowing about how they saved our pansy asses 60 years ago.

What one gathers from history is that politicians who try to cut-and-paste past events into their understanding of current situations are prone to lead their countries to disaster. The real appeasers were guided by their - often first-hand - experiences of the trenches and an over-anxiety to avoid the catastrophe of 1914. A generation later, Anthony Eden convinced himself, Bush-style, that Nasser was Hitler, and conducted the Suez campaign on that basis. The Vietnam war was largely caused by the Americans' conviction that Ho Chi Minh was Stalin or Mao, whereas it is far from clear that Ho was anything other than an opportunistic nationalist until US enmity left communism as his only resort.

Of course, politicians should understand history. Unfortunately, it is not something that either Bush or Blair bothered about much when they had more time. All they now have to guide them are fuzzy ideas about Hitler and Churchill they might have picked up from bubblegum cards.

If the president must drag Hitler into it, he might consider the thoughts of Christopher Layne, of the Cato Institute, as expressed in a recent edition of the Sunday's Los Angeles Times: "The rise of a would-be hegemon always has triggered the formation of counter-hegemonic alliances by other states . . . The big question is whether the same fate will befall a hegemonic America, or whether the United States somehow is exempt from the lessons of history." Any comments, Mr President?

This article was oriiginally published in the Guardian. It is reprinted with permission of the author.