North Korea...

Kim has again "doubled down" in his bid to force the West to give him what he wants. He has unveiled a huge nuclear fuel plant, shelled an unfortified island and killed two civilians and two soldiers, and now is threatening to attack even harder if South Korea goes ahead with a scheduled military exercise on an uninhabited island on the other side of the peninsula.

North Korean communism has become such a failure at every level of operation that without outside support (in the form of food, fuel and cash) it cannot continue to exist. No assistance or support will come without North Korean aggression, so the aggression on the part of the Kim regime has to escalate with each passing year. More and more of North Korea's meager resources are being squandered to extend Kim's ability to threaten and cajole the West, forcing the need for greater and more extensive outside foreign support.

Both Clinton and Bush Jr. took American compliance with this de facto policy to new heights... and (shockingly enough) the first President to NOT follow this plan (so far) has been Obama. That's right... Obama.

Obama has not offered to return to the six-party talks, nor has he offered to hold one-to-one talks with Pyongyang (something I was fairly certain he would do two years ago)... and his condemnation of North Korean aggression has been as firm and forthright as I could hope, given the circumstances. The question now is... what next?

Let's assume that the South does go ahead with their planned exercises, and the North does something stupid like ordering an air strike or another artillery attack. Do we simply condemn the actions... again... or do we react? We have the entire Eighth Army in theater, along with two complete carrier groups and a substantial portion of the 7th Air Force. Should the North take the saber-rattling to the next level, we have the means to counter it with perfect legitimacy and right.

Does Obama have the gumption to carry this policy through? Could the man actually recognize how non-functional past policies and practices have been? Could he do this one right?