That maybe an invasion is actually the best option at this point? Not just the only workable one?

The fact is, that with a very few stellar exceptions*, most dictatorships leave their nations only one way: feet first. It is obvious North Korea and Cuba are prepared to starve well into the middle of this century, and Saddam & Sons, with the advantage of squatting on loads of oil reserves, would probably have held onto his dynasty for the next fifty years. Japan and Germany had to be destroyed before they were rebuilt.

Now that the Cold War isn't allowing every punk ass dictator to thumb his nose at the world, with all the communist ones being backed by the U.S.S.R., and far too many right-wing ones being backed by the U.S., maybe we can start tossing these wastes of oxygen out one by one. It would be nice if the civilized nations of the world could get together on doing this, whether through the U.N. or not, but if not, well, maybe it's cowboy time.

But that has problems too. From many directions.

At what point does tolerance of the suffering of populations under tyranny end? Where does the "sovereign right" of a nation stop? Did South Africa have a right to order its own nation as it saw fit? Why, or why not? And what about North Korea, Cuba, and dozens of other tyrannies?

When a man is beating his kids in his house, maybe killing them, does he have a right to tell the cops outside to respect his private property? And then what if the cops aren't doing the job anyway? On the take, or crooks themselves?

Vigilante is an ugly word, and an unpleasant concept. The function of law is to place the inherent right of using force in self-defense under the rule of objective laws. Otherwise, you get gang warfare, and everyone making their own rules as they go along. If the guy making his own rules is the Lone Ranger, great. But what if he's The Man With No Name? Or Billy the Kid?

Is the U.S. a vigilante now? Even if we're the Lone Ranger, or Batman, it just makes us good vigilantes. We have allies, but does that just make it a vigilante mob? The U.N.--the supposed cops--is corrupt itself. Where do we go from here?

At some point, either the U.N. needs drastic reform, or better yet, build a new organization with strict behavioral and moral rules for membership, and with rigid regulations for the use of force. Maybe based on NATO, or something else.

This needs a lot of thought.

*Frankly, I still don't know why the Soviet Union decided to fold quietly up at that particular point in history. I like to give Reagan credit, the left likes to credit Gorbachev. In some ways, both positions are right and wrong. In my more cynical moments, and despite millions of words written on the subject, I suspect nobody else is quite sure exactly what happened either.