National Review nails it.

When North Korea acts up, you tend to see a great deal of commentary from — sorry — ill-informed people who are assigned to write about the subject. That’s why it’s refreshing to see things like this National Review editorial, which avoids the partisan temptation to blame North Korea’s behavior on an American President of the opposite party:

Some conservatives have argued that the Yeonpyeong attack was a direct response to U.S. “weakness. In fact, the Obama administration has been relatively tough on Pyongyang — much tougher than the Bush administration was during its final two years, when economic sanctions were loosened and North Korea was removed from the State Department’s list of terror sponsors. Go back and read secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s remarks at the July 2009 ASEAN Regional Forum in Thailand. A hawkish former Bush official describes that speech as “the best statement on North Korea strategy in the past 20 years. The Obama team — led by Clinton, secretary of defense Robert Gates, and State Department Asia hand Kurt Campbell — has bolstered America’s alliance with South Korea and championed muscular sanctions aimed at squeezing Pyongyang’s finances. Just a few days before the Yeonpyeong attack, the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation, both of which have links to the North Korean government.

For years, of course, left-leaning commenters blamed President Bush for North Korea’s nuclear program, even accusing him of fabricating evidence of that non-existent uranium enrichment program. We now know the truth about that. The editorial calls for military restraint, and for tightening sanctions and returning North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, but acknowledges that these measures won’t topple the regime by themselves. It would have been perfect if had at least broached the discussion of catalyzing change.