No I'm claiming yellowcake and WMD weren't done to us. 9/11 we attributed to Al Qaeda correctly.

Well exactly. In this case the FBI and the President are saying it. Ergo that carries some weight they don't think they will be proven wrong. The issue is not how to start trouble with an enemy. The issue is how credible is such a statement when it does come from a high official. You are forgetting what you are supposed to be cynical about. :)

That conspiracy theory was big in the early 1960s. Today of course that's changed and everyone buys into the lone gunman. We've had far more assassins with little ties to organizations since then.

That's actually a counter example similar to speculation of Soviet involvement in the JFK assassination. The yellow journalist press was sure it was Spain but the USA government never made that assertion. Even when we declared war 2 months later McKinley did not cite the sinking of the Maine as a reason.

Those weren't done to us.

What did the USA blame Iraq for having done to us they didn't do? I can't think of much of anything. Now they certainly got stuff wrong about what was happening in Iraq and our record isn't so hot on that but accusations of specific violations we are pretty good on.

And Iraq on WMDs is somewhat exceptional in that they were sending out fake signals for internal and external reasons.

The reason is the USA government has a pretty good track record of not blaming foreign countries for stuff they didn't do. Meanwhile US opponents have a long history of denying involvement when they were. Comparing what is know 10 years later is pretty close to what you get from blindly believing the USA government on culpability.

How will this apply to N.Korea?

Its hard to see how it would apply. The two local actors most likely to act against North Korea other than ourselves is South Korea and Japan. And as you point out we already back South Korea. We are talking about substantially arming Japan, though Japan's goals are still defensive. The analogy might be to encourage the more militant elements in Japan. Though I'm not sure we have that much influence over Japan for it to matter.

But anyway your original claim is we didn't do anything in those other cases and you can see we did.

What do you imagine we will do against (nuclear armed and sitting on the border of China right next to Russia) Korea?

If our goal is not to annoy them then we either have to shift Japan to being more responsive or China to being less protective. I can think of things we could offer China for them to sell out North Korea. Heck I'm not sure if we promised an orderly dismantlement they might not go for it. China sends out very mixed signals when N Korea acts up.

As for nuclear armed in a real war I have serious questions about how much damage their nuclear program is capable of, though there is always risk. North Korea is a dangerous foe.

We'd blame them and condemn them and attempt to get sanctions. We already do all those things so it's an empty threat.

We don't have a full on blockade. Though a full on blockade would likely mean ship to ship battles and they could respond with attacks against South Korea. So escalating to blockade we have to be at least willing to have a war.

In your own post you listed a half dozen mistakes the IT organization made. I don't know how Sony's hack was done. But..

a) Is there any reason attachments shouldn't be sandboxed?
b) Is there any reason that executables should ever pass through?
c) Is there any reason that end users should be able to run an arbitrary executable? If PDFs are going to execute from email why not have that environment sandboxed?
d) Is there any reason servers should be compromised just because clients are?
e) Is there any reason they aren't running internal security on their network?

etc...

That sounds like they did a dreadful job.

North Korea attacked. This was state sponsored. That's the difference between the people who die every month in car crashes and 9/11.

I doubt that Sony is under any obligation to have security that a nation state can't breach. For example may need to preserve depositors against 2 guys with handguns but not against an army.

Yeah I looked it up. Worst (or best case) regarding range of the Taepodong-2 does get you to ICBM territory. So very borderline. OK so they might have some terrible ICBMs I see your point.

When Iran and Lybia were both state sponsors of terrorism against the US, what did we do?

Well in the case of Iran we funded a major war against them that killed hundreds of thousands. We've harmed them diplomatically and hemmed them in. We've also backed other enemies in the region like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. As for Libya we hit them with sanctions weakened their influence and then just recently helped flip the government.

How about Saudi Arabia's support of Al Quieda?

Saudi Arabia's government doesn't support Al Qaeda. Their population does. And our response is to help keep the Saudi government in power.

How about Pakistan's ongoing support of the Taliban?

Well Pakistan's government is split. Mainly we back the anti Taliban factions. We also have conducted frequently drone strikes on their soil.

Do you want your children to be the ones dead so that the US can go avenge them? Or would you prefer they not die in the first place?

Of course I'd prefer they not die in the first place. But the real question is do I want my kid living in constant fear of unlikely but possible threats or do I want her to enjoy a full rich life even if it involves some risk. And as a country I think her capacity to live a full rich life is gone if we allow others to control our internal culture.

I don't know why the Japanese are so blase about North Korea. I don't know why the South Koreans are. But I do know I don't want the USA to be if they are going to start that nonsense here.

Take the Korean war. If the South had indicated they wanted to join with the North the USA would have had a tough time stopping them. If the North had indicated they wanted to join with the South the Soviets would have had a hard time stopping them.

The rest of your post is basically saying that given the options the Koreans choose to evolve as two separate peoples with differing values and government philosophies. Sure. But that's not the west directly doing it, it is the west creating the conditions under which it could happen. The Koreans are the ones doing it.

the fight ensured that it was a far bigger, nastier, and longer war than it would have been otherwise

I don't know about longer. There are plenty of ethnic conflicts that have gone on for centuries in countries. I'd argue the bigger, nastier probably means shorter.

If either of the superpowers had stayed out of it, one or the other side would have won the war reasonably quickly.

I'm assuming if both superpowers had stayed out of it. Otherwise you are just talking about the conquest of at least a large chunk of Korea. If both stayed out of it, I'm not sure it would be over quickly. It might very well be that they couldn't unify. I suspect the South wins without interference at this point since the economy is so much larger.

Its also important to keep in mind that outsiders of all types have been fiddling around in Korea since the 1600s- first the Chinese, then an incident with the American-owned ship "General Sherman", then the Japanese, then the USSR and USA

That's the case with every country. All countries get fiddled with. Powerful countries spend a tremendous amount of their time managing the weaker ones. Weak ones tend to be proxy for a strong one. Middle power get stuck in the middle quite often between various powerful ones. That's not unique to Korea. I'm sure France would have liked to have not lost to Prussia then had a 1/3rd of their young men wiped out a generation and a half later by Germany and then be conquered in the next generation and then having their economy reorder for the next 2 in line with German priorities.

Given that history, it shouldn't be surprising that they turned inward and cut ties with the West and South Korea, which is strongly aligned with the USA.

They've done more than turn inward. They've been provoking the USA, South Korea and Japan for 60 years. If they wanted a quiet life of seclusion there wouldn't be nearly this much stress.