North Korea says it just tested another nuclear weapon. Why is this happening? Hasn’t the West done everything to give them a ladder to climb down from the tree of Armageddon?

One particular rung in the ladder was the decision by the Bush Administration to remove North Korea from the State Department’s list of terror-sponsoring states. This surely had not a shred of justice in it: there is no evidence that suggests the North Koreans have stopped supporting terror. On the contrary, it was less than a year before that they were caught building Syria a nice fat center-for-the-production-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction. They have also been caught supplying weapons to Palestinian terrorists by sea, and building underground tunnels for Hezbollah.

The only reason for taking the North Koreans off the list was as part of a carrot-and-stick policy regarding that blasted nuclear thing. It failed.

If the Obama Administration wants simultaneously to (a) show it will not be pushed around, (b) pounce on an opportunity to right a wrong of its predecessor, and (c) draw attention away from its other troubles, it will immediately put North Korea back on the list.