<You're overstating, Tom. Dictatorships end all the time without foreign invasions, sometimes even with little bloodshed.

Dictatorships can end peacefully. The Soviet Union is a good example. Nicaragua's communists yielded to an election. And there are certainly others.

However, putting all such in one column and all the dictatorships that were only ended by military action in another, I think you would find the latter column considerably larger. Given the Iraqi regime's resistance even now, I doubt that it was going to go quietly given other circumstances. And Saddam's sons were all set to step in for the next thirty years.

I am still amused by the fact that when I was younger, the Left was totally gung-ho for the military overthrown of tyrants, supporting "People's Armies" in almost any Third World thugocracy you could name, most of them supported and financed by outside nations like the U.S.S.R.