I make the analogy with North Korea. North Korea is obviously a threat to South Korea. But if South Korea were to start bombing North Korea and kill 250 people a day the question would be how long it would take for people to ask "Why are you doing this?"
This is going to likely get me called a tankie, but the civilian massacres South Korea did even after the war didn't cause a blink to the US. They killed whole communities that had a communist insurgency in them.