There's definitely an argument for the expressiveness of the language, but what you're talking about is more of a mechanical aspect of the C++ language itself.
What I'm talking about is more about the usefulness of the language in a practical sense, not what it allows you to express.
The reason I picked C++ templates in particular was because they allow you to make very effective use of information at compile time. Other languages, at least in my experience, don't give me ways to really tell the compiler (or interpreter) my intentions as effectively as C++ allows me to when I'm using template metaprogramming. So, to that effect, C++ is superior on top of just C compatibility.
... Not that any of this takes away from your original argument.