No, Pearl Harbor is not ancient history. It’s part of my history and many others who were alive at the time. I was just an infant, but the Japanese sneak attack on our Hawaii naval base led to early memories of being on trains filled with young soldiers, many of whom did not live to return home.
The attack was on December 7, 1941 and a day later in a speech to Congress, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it a “date that will live in infamy.” War was declared on Japan and on Germany. Four years later both enemy nations were conquered, largely due to America’s capacity to gear up to provide everything our armed forces needed. It was won, too, because it was a war to protect freedom from authoritarian, anti-Democracy enemies.
A new book, “Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn”, has been published by the Rand Corporation that describes itself as a “research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, health and more prosperous.” It was formed after World War II to connect military planning with research and development decisions. It is an independent, non-profit organization. The study looks at eight strategic blunders.
As David C. Gompert, the lead author of the book and senior fellow at Rand, said, “Leaders who blunder into war tend to have unwarranted confidence in their ability to script the future and control events. They favor information, analysis, and advisors that confirm their beliefs over those that contradict them. In essence, blinders cause blunders.”
While Americans are still debating whether we should have gone to war in Iraq in 2003 or whether our troops should have been withdrawn by 2011, the cold fact of Islamic aggression has seen President Obama reintroduce and increase our “boots on the ground.” Enemies cannot be ignored. At best they can be “contained” until, like the former Soviet Union, they collapse or change in some fashion. Assuming, as our current negotiations with Iran suggest, that they do not harbor extremely dangerous intentions can be fatal.