Agree with your first two paragraphs.
Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
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3. The Pearl Harbor attack was based upon the mistaken assumption that the US lacked the will to fight in response.* I doubt anyone would make a similar mistake any time soon.
That may be correct but I would suggest that based on history we not bet the farm on it.
And to preempt the inevitable question, no, I don't think that Al Qaeda believed the attack would make US pack up and leave the Middle East. In fact, if I were forced to guess at what they wanted to happen, I would say they wanted the US to lash out, because eventually this would cause the sympathetic tide to turn against the US.
Agree -- but think they expected the target to be solely Afghanistan and they were prepared for that. They also thought, I believe, that an attack by us in Afghanistan would offer all the advantages you cite plus the added advantage of not disrupting the ME as the 'Stan is not in or of the ME. Our attack in Iraq caught them off balance (they recovered rapidly, they're far more agile than big bureaucratic behemoth us) but not as far off balance as it might have had not Bush delayed (IMO at Blair's request) to go back to the UN.
They knew full well the terms of American operational doctrine -- collateral damage would become a problem. They further could probably have deduced that the US would have a hard time adapting to insurgent warfare, with a fair amount of pain to civilians occurring during the lag time -- it would have required that they read one or two books on the Vietnam War.
Possibly. I suspect they realized that our ability to go heavy in Afghanistan was limited and therefor trounceable. Note that in Iraq, they (AQ et.al.) had almost as much trouble and took almost as much time getting militarily organized as we did. Saddams loyalists and the local crimianl gangs were better prepapred but were not a part of "them" (AQ et.al.). The different approach than they expected also took a toll on them in Afghanistan and I suggest that it took them longer to get organized there than it took us. As I said, they are more agile and flexible than us; therefor I think their slowness in adaptation in both theaters is a sign of some weakness. Saddam's folks just got worn down and were running low on money.
A lesson we ought to have considered prior to OIF: don't go to war based on the best case scenario of your initiating actions. And don't forget the corrollary: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
We draw far different conclusions from the same data. One should not go to war based on any preconception of what may occur; such a decision should be based solely on a need to go to war. We did have a need -- induced by the failure of four prior Presidents to properly respond to 22 years of provocations from the ME (NOT Afghanistan, the ME, a critical distinction) -- and we went. The hopes of some politicians are broadly and certainly militarily irrelevant IMO.

The old saw that no plan survives first contact with the enemy is incorrect. It should be "Only a good plan will survive the first contact." Because that is true; the other is not.
There's also my favorite, which hasn't quite made it to aphorism: in the modern era, the side that initiates military action hasn't fared well. ("Don't cross the line of departure first," would be its pithy iteration.)
Given the fact that the initiating North got a draw out of Korea; the other initiating North effectively got a default win out of Viet Nam and that we got nominal wins after initiating the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama incursions, I'm not sure that's correct. I'd also posit a point and then ask a question re: Afghanistan and Iraq. Point; We haven't had the proverbial cake walk but it seems we're some distance from not faring well in either place.

The question; In both current cases, who crossed the LD first?