From your article:
To return to the Pearl Harbor analogy: There were two reports on the possible consequences of a Japanese air attack prepared in 1941. Early in the year came the Martin-Bellinger report, named for the two air operations officers, one serving Lt. Gen. Short, the other serving Adm. Kimmel; later there was the Farthing report, named for the then commander of the Hawaiian Air Force.
Both reports assumed that the target of such an attack would be the naval base, and not the Pacific Fleet. My point is that the best intelligence analysis in the world, supported by a realistic assessment of one's opponents and their motives can come to erroneous conclusions. From an American point of view, for however much no one wanted to lose the Pacific Fleet, the naval base was far more valuable. The fleet could be replaced, and naval expansion was already proceeding apace. New naval interceptors, bombers and torpedo attack planes were in development--the Wildcat was already replacing the Buffalo as the fleet fighter. Ships and aircraft can deliver themselves to the forward base. But to rebuild the crucial habor facilities, drydocks, machine shops, fuel stations would require a massive effort involving a disasterous disruption of mercantile shipping. The "tank farms" filled with precious bunker oil for the Pacific Fleet were a concern uppermost in the minds of the responsible officers. For these very good and sufficient reasons, American military men were concerned with the preservation of the naval base, and assumed that it would be the primary Japanese target.
Yamamoto, however, knew the United States well enough to know what sort of disaster loomed for Japan is the Pacific Fleet moved out to challenge their advance agains the Netherlands East Indies, and the rich resources available there. Yamamoto wanted to neutralize the Pacific Fleet for six months--and he acheived his goal. He was intent on removing the threat to the flank of the main Japanese effort known as the southern operation, and he succeeded beyond his best expectation.
If the Pacific Fleet hadn't been at Pearl Harbor, Nagumo's fleet would have tried to hunt it down. The Japanese would have, in fact, preferred to have found Kimmel's fleet elsewhere, because ships sunk in deep, blue water cannot be raised and repaired or used for scrap. (Which is, by the way, one of the principle refutations of conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor.)
In that case, military planners attempted to take the most realistic possible account of Japanese intentions, but were deluded by their own emminently reasonable estimates of what constituted the most crucial target in Hawaii. In our current situation, the government seems to have arrived at a decision, and then used very questionable intelligence to justify the plan of action after it had been adopted. Not only were considerations of the possible effect on middle eastern public opinion discounted, it seems that no account was taken of what world opinion would be. It appears that assessments of the likely degree of difficulty of invasion and prolonged occupation were based, not upon military and political realities, but upon the eager assertions of Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress--the complete opposite of a reliably disinterested source for such an assessment. Middle eastern reaction has proven crucial as militants appear to flow into Iraq via Syria and Iran, and possibly Jordan. World public opinion is crucial, in that we haven't a shred of worthwhile UN support, and are basically footing the bill alone, while Americans and British are killed. When the Poles and Italians attempt to join our occupation, for reasons which one may characterize as self-interestedly venal (major pot-calling-the-kettle-black there), but which are at least superficially laudable as being done for the benefit of the Iraqi people--those nations' troops become targets.
I used the Pearl Harbor example, because, despite silly conspiracy theories which sprouted almost immediately, and continue to this day--the evidence, much from Kimmel, Short, Stark, Hull, Knox, Marshall and other Americans in testimony at the Army and Navy boards, and much else from Genda, Nagumo, Fuchida and many other Japanese in correspondence and interviews--that evidence is that the United States was working from the best intelligence then available to arrive at the best defense possible based upon reasonable estimates of the Japanese intentions,
which did not at all coincide with actual Japanese intentions. How much the worse when intelligence is simply seen as a tool to be used after the fact to justify policy arrived at based upon partisan theory, and not upon any reasonable assessment of
realpolitik? As the paragraph above from your article points out, chillingly, what does this bode for the possible actions of this administration in the event Bush is re-elected?
