To the Editor:
“In Iraq, Bottoms Up for Democracy” (Week in Review, April 17) seems to equate democracy with men getting drunk in bars and ogling women. The fact that “young women beckon men from the doorways of shiny nightclubs” is cited as a positive example of a more progressive, “free-spirited” Iraq.
In fact, it is just this association of democracy with license and with dishonoring women that has retarded its progress in the Islamic world.
JOSEPHINE DONOVAN
Portsmouth, N.H., April 18, 2011
Note from KBJ: Liberty is not always pretty, but it's always better than the alternative.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 