This is to deal with dictator-toleration in only the broadest terms, without mention of strategies for throwing out the bums or the costs for so doing. I note the matter mainly because of how bad we presently feel about Iraq -- and how grave would be the mistake of concluding that, because the way has been hard, we were wrong not to stay home and tend to our knitting.

It would have been hard to get rid of Castro and to clean up after him. Yet, is it really doubtful, all these years later, what a gain to peace and freedom his political demise would have been? There would have been no missile showdown with the Soviet Union; no Kennedy assassination; no Cuban-inspired attempt to communize Chile; no bloody guerrilla wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador; no political prisons for freedom-minded Cubans; no flight of Cubans to the United States; no Mariel refugee crisis; no overturned boats and drowned refugees between Cuba and Florida; no Elian Gonzalez mess; no...

Action has its undoubted costs and dangers -- just like non-action, when you get right down to it.