Interesting idea, but I think it's full of hot air. Democracies still begin wars and engage and support wars, but they do it in different ways than do authortarian regimes. Hence the duplicity of the gulf of Tonkin incident, the pretext that got us involved in Vietnam. Hence the invention of the "Proxy War," such as our little Contra / Sandinista adventure in the 1980's.

In the old days of kings and queens, we used to have a term, mercenary, for the soldiers that did a country's dirty work. They were basically prostitutes of death, whores with rifles and swords.

We still have organs we haven't used in years like our appendix, and our tribal-hunter instincts are still there, and not all the football games and cop-shoot-em-shows in prime time heaven can placate them.

No, the demons that start wars are still around in democracies, I believe. And when it comes to democracies fighting one another, I am confident that the duly elected leaders will find some way to have people killed and be killed, albeit not their own citizens, perhaps, if that's of any comfort to you, Roger.