Another Dumb Suggestion that We Bomb North Korea

This time, it’s William Kristol, so the lefty bloggers are calling for their smelling salts. Where were they when liberals and so-called “realists” were saying the same thing?

It is true, of course, that diplomacy alone will never disarm Kim Jong Il or contain him as a proliferation threat. I fear we’re already too late to understand that, and some still refuse to understand it (or can’t).

But absent an imminent danger to U.S. national security that can’t be addressed by other means, bombing or invading North Korea is a dumb idea, no matter who suggests it. If proposing military action is about sounding tough for the domestic audience, it’s just going to make the proponent sound stupid. If it’s about threatening Kim Jong Il, it’s an empty threat. If the goal is to destroy Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program, you can bomb the reactors and pray they don’t retaliate, but then tell me which of these mountains their actual nuclear bombs are under:

If the goal is to get rid of Kim Jong Il, we lack the national will and the available forces to do it ourselves. Only the North Koreans can do that. We could give them intelligence and encouragement. To a very limited extent, we could arm them and supply them. But we can’t do it for them. The strategy should be Contain (proliferation, conventional deterrence), Constrict (the vulnerable finances the regime uses to feed its army), and Collapse (through more subversive methods of outreach to, and support for, North Koreans who oppose Kim Jong Il’s misrule).