"Peaceful democracies" a myth?

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Mark Helprin of the Claremont Institute takes aim at President Bush's common claim that "democracies are peaceful countries." An interesting read about how "democracies" can be a threat to their neighbors as much as authoritarian governments, although I would say the point about the value of democracies is being missed: they allow the citizens within them to live the way they deem fit (within certain parameters, of course). But then again, it might not be so much that Helprin himself misses the point as that he doesn't address that point because it's not part of Bush's "self-evident truth."