Should We Bomb North Korea?

What is it about North Korea that brings out the best in our pundit class:

The most immediate thing to be said about this is that barring a serious provocation (i.e. mobilizing units to cross the DMZ, firing at U.S. or allied vessels, etc.) no U.S. administration - Republican or Democrat - is going to risk the deaths of thousands of South Koreans by bombing North Korea. It's just extraordinarily unlikely to happen barring some very sudden, dangerous change in North Korean behavior.

You have to wonder why Kristol and Hume, who surely understand this, would nonetheless just casually throw this option on the table. Will people come away thinking Obama is feckless for not risking the destruction of Seoul or that conservatives are unable to offer any serious alternatives to the Obama approach?

[Hat tip: Matthew Yglesias]

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb goes to bat for his boss:

But rather than military action, new sanctions, or the elimination of food aid and fuel oil shipments that keep the regime in power, the Obama administration has opted to unleash the "the strongest possible adjectives" in response to North Korea's provocations.

That's interesting, because there's this story dated April 30, 2009:

The United States says it will not give North Korea further economic aid until Pyongyang returns to nuclear talks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that the Obama administration has "no interest and no willingness" to give North Korea further economic aid.

Moreover, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea also supply the North with food and fuel. Even if the U.S. were to totally cut off its own shipments, it's likely that, at a minimum, China would continue to sustain the regime. And finally, as discussed above, military action is (at this point) not a serious suggestion.

I appreciate the fact that some commentators need to leverage the North's nuclear antics into some kind of indictment of the Obama administration. But it helps when that criticism is grounded in a serious alternative. Throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks isn't particularly useful.

As I said earlier, I think this Joshua Stanton piece from the New Ledger lays out some ways to put the screws to the North without any of the absurd talk of "limited air strikes."