Sometimes, the North Koreans make it too easy. An official Made in Pyongyang video has been rocketing around the Internet since yesterday that fantasizes about destroying U.S. cities with missile attacks (see Jillian Melchior’s post on it yesterday). All this after the Obama administration tried in vain to make nice with the new “leader” of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Such compensatory fantasy by young Kim about being big enough to destroy your enemy (the “nest of wickedness” according to the video) would be laughable if it weren’t a) about murdering hundreds of thousands of people, and b) suddenly more realistic, given North Korea’s successful long-range ballistic-missile launch last year.

Yet this is the same regime that secretary-of-defense-to-be Chuck Hagel believes should be engaged directly (more unconditional talks, perhaps?) and that isolating the nut jobs of Pyongyang is the “last thing” that we want to do. Unfortunately, reality has a way of scotching even the most dogged of dialogue advocates, and we are clearly past that point now. Our diplomacy with the Hermit Kingdom has failed, as I wrote recently, and we, the world, and even North Korea would be better off if we just stopped trying to negotiate with them, gave up on sanctions, and instead treated Pyongyang as a nuclear state. Then, if it crosses the line by using WMDs against us or our allies, it will be Kim Jong Un’s villas that disappear in a puff of smoke. Sometimes, simplicity is indeed the best choice.