Pearl Harbor resulted in ~2,200 deaths in one day with no warning. Iraq has resulted in 100,000-600,000 deaths over the last 7 years, depending on who you ask. Pearl Harbor led to the involvement of the USA, and the most terrifying weapon in history in single most horrible war in history and to its consequent victory. The Nuke won the war and though it caused a huge number of deaths, it essentially ended the worst war in history and destroyed the most horrible enemy the world has ever known.

Preempting Pearl Harbor would have been a stupid mistake, but that was obvious at the time. Iraq was not so, and was not such an obvious mistake. I oppose preemption in general. I see it as, as you said, counter-productive and unattractive. I wish we would have waited for Saddam to do something outrageous so we could be more justified in our decision (as we are doing with North Korea), but there was in fact a great deal of justification for what the Gov't decided to do. It was not an ill-informed decision. It was a thought-out choice based in evaluation of evidence. Saddam deceived us; we fell for it and attacked. That is from his own mouth.

Still, you're right, preemption is not a good approach to anything military in nature.

The thing with preemption is, how far do you preempt things? Some say that Russia is rebuilding itself right now and engaging in new cold war, the same is said of China. Could preemption of either of this nations benefit the US? Especially with China the case could be built as it's a communist nation...

I think culturally the Japanese people were different because of the acts of the Emperor of Japan to lull the nation into accepting occupational forces. I don't think the same would have happened with a preempted attack.

The whole attack on Pearl Harbor was not a success entirely, while alot of ships were destroyed the aircraft carriers were not, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, is believed to have said "I'm afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with terrible resolve".

> If the USA had preempted Pearl Harbor, might the reconstruction of Japan have turned out as badly as present day Iraq?

that begs the question:
if the usa had attacked first, would we still have won?

i think sun tzu would smile on your closing statement, j.

There was plenty of warning. But we don't like to heed those.

>> ^Doc_M:
Pearl Harbor resulted in ~2,200 deaths in one day with no warning. Iraq has resulted in 100,000-600,000 deaths over the last 7 years, depending on who you ask. Pearl Harbor led to the involvement of the USA, and the most terrifying weapon in history in single most horrible war in history and to its consequent victory. The Nuke won the war and though it caused a huge number of deaths, it essentially ended the worst war in history and destroyed the most horrible enemy the world has ever known.
Preempting Pearl Harbor would have been a stupid mistake, but that was obvious at the time. Iraq was not so, and was not such an obvious mistake. I oppose preemption in general. I see it as, as you said, counter-productive and unattractive. I wish we would have waited for Saddam to do something outrageous so we could be more justified in our decision (as we are doing with North Korea), but there was in fact a great deal of justification for what the Gov't decided to do. It was not an ill-informed decision. It was a thought-out choice based in evaluation of evidence. Saddam deceived us; we fell for it and attacked. That is from his own mouth.
Still, you're right, preemption is not a good approach to anything military in nature.

if the usa had attacked first, would we still have won?

Japan never had any chance of beating the USA. The most they could hope for was a draw or perhaps taking Hawaii. They had much less natural resources at their disposal (especially oil), and a much smaller population, and they had their hands full with the Chinese who also vastly outnumbered them. Japan is only twice the size of California, and the idea of Japan conquering all of North America is even more unlikely than Hitler conquering all of Russia. Japan's invasion and genocide against China would have been a pretext for war in itself, but weaker than Pearl Harbor. If the USA had struck first, at the end of the war, the Japanese would have had one less reason to realize that their government had been wrong, and one less reason to accept the U.S. occupation, and one more meme that may be interpreted by Japanese chauvinists as a reason to fight the U.S. occupation.

America might have been somewhat less successful in persuading its own people to support the war, but that would not have been sufficient to lose it. Far more important are the views of the conquered people, and whether they will resist like the French resisted Hitler and the Algerians resisted France. (Interestingly, the Algerian resistance was labeled terrorist by the French when they used very similar tactics to what the French resistance had used).

No foreign power can successfully occupy a large armed populace that is (most of it) determined to resist by any means necessary and fight to the last man, unless that foreign power wipes out the majority of the populace.

Therefore those nations who reject genocide must also accept local self-determination and not engage in futile attempts to occupy regions that strongly oppose such occupation. This state of affairs is amplified by recent technology that has enormously expanded the amount of damage an individual angry citizen can do.

On the other hand, nowadays it's rather embarrassing to the USA that reports of genocide in Germany and China were not sufficient to provoke it to war, but a small (1/50 as many deaths as the firebombing of Tokyo) bombing run on a military target did the trick.

The sheer propaganda value one gains by being on defense vastly outweighs any small military advantage that might be obtained through preemption.

I need to add one giant qualifier to the closing statement of my original post, which is that it only applies if your enemy is resolved against genocide. It does not apply if the enemy could nearly wipe you out before you even have a chance to counterattack.

I hesitate to post this addendum because it promotes brinkmanship. It would be so much better if everyone believed the unqualified version wherein the actions that are best for the common good are rationalized as being also in one's own self-interest. Many wars begin as deluded attempts at preemption.

^ true, but my previous post was based on an interesting hypothetical, conjured up by your closing bit, "The sheer propaganda value one gains by being on d..."
which is one of the things art of war was all about.

as in, if the US preempts pearl, your opening premise. due to japanese naval buildup, they freak, summer of '41, bomb tokyo bay or something.

well, there's your sheer propaganda value, right? maybe it's not just japan that thinks that was uncalled for, and sides with them. maybe a desire to kick our ass is what finally unites japan and china. russia chimes in, britain disowns us, canada and mexico start looking at us funny...

At that time, Chinese were already being massacred by Japan, so there is no way that a preemptive US bombing of Tokyo would have angered China. And after the signature of the Tripartite pact, Japan essentially became Britain's enemy, so Britain would not object to a US preemptive strike on Japan.
But Russia is different. If for any reason Hitler and Stalin had decided not to backstab each other, the war would might have been lost by the allies. If the USA had entered the war too soon, Hitler might have postponed or canceled Operation Barbarossa.