In the case of North Korea, President Bush seems bent on relying on a diplomatic approach while he pursues his military buildup against the Iraqi host. All the more reason to reflect on the irony of President Clinton’s remarks over the holidays that he had a plan to bomb North Korea’s nuclear reactor back in 1994 if Pyongyang didn’t freeze its bomb-making work there.

Mr. Clinton made his remarks in the Netherlands, where he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that North Korea must be persuaded — or forced — to stop the weapons program. “Make no mistake about it, it has to be ended,” the 42nd president was quoted as saying. “You do not want North Korea making bombs and selling them to the highest bidder.” He told his-Dutch audience that when his administration learned, during his first term, that Pyongyang “was planning six to eight” bombs a year, “We drew up plans to destroy the reactor.”

It’s an ironical disclosure given those of us who remember the little tempest around town back in 1994, when the Jewish Forward issued an editorial called “How to End Whitewater.” Its recommendation was to bomb North Korea’s nuclear facilities. The editorial argued that the main benefit would be in lifting from then-emerging democracies in East Asia, and beyond, the threat of old fashioned communist nuclear terror. It also suggested that one of the benefits of action would be that Mr. Clinton’s domestic troubles would fall into perspective, much as was the case when Prime Minister Begin acted against the Iraqi bomb-making facility known as Osirak.

The editorial prompted the literary critic Alfred Kazin to write a furious letter to the Forward, suggesting that such a hawkish editorial wasn’t appropriate in a newspaper that had been allied with the labor union movement. The Forward reacted by reprinting its editorial from June 30, 1950, in reaction to the communist attacks against free Korea. For it turned out that the Forward had said at the time that if the North Koreans continued their attack, there would be a world war. And so be it.

Prime Minister Begin endured months, even years of calumny for his action against the Iraqi a-bomb facility, but the ruckus eventually abated. A decade later people all over the globe came to recognize the farsightedness of Israel’s pre-emptive attack. We mention this perspective because history has a funny way of playing tricks on politicians, not to mention the rest of us, and one can’t help wondering how things might have gone differently had Mr. Clinton taken military action against North Korea’s bomb-making reactor when it first had the chance. Not only would North Korea have been stymied, but the Democrats might hold the White House today. Something for Mr. Bush to think about.