War not about Iraqi democracy

Ben Foster Albemarle County
Published: July 20, 2008

In “Bush warps Jeffersonian principles by prosecuting a ‘war of choice’,” (The Daily Progress, July 13), columnists R.K. Ramazani and Scott Harrop display an impressive familiarity with Jeffersonian quotations — and even with Jeffersonian thinking. They claim that “he would turn in his grave to hear that his beloved country had justified a war of choice and occupation in the name of pushing democracy.”

The relevance of all the quotations (and even the article itself) is somewhat obscure, since almost nobody believes that “pushing democracy” in the Middle East was the primary justification, stated or unstated, for the invasion of Iraq.