LOS ANGELES — You have to be dumber than a brick to believe that the North Korea problem can be solved by anything other than diplomacy and negotiation. Even the Macho Man of South Korea seems to have been hit with a bout of annoying but inescapable reason.
"We have no choice but . . . to have peace settled through inter-Korean dialogue," the oft-hawkish Lee Myung Bak recently squawked. Thank you very much indeed, Mr. South Korean President, for de-emphasizing non-peaceful options.
We start on this acrimonious note because war is no way to cope with North Korea. Sure, its baby-bottle-throwing antics do sometimes make you want to put its leader over your knee for a serious spanking. But this bears repeating: The road to a peaceful Korean Peninsula is not through a second Korean War. The one back in the 1950s was bad enough.