The Sleeping Giant is Wide Awake
And other parallels between October 7, 2023 and December 7, 1941
History has a way of recycling lessons, if not outright repeating itself. Last week, as December 7th passed, I found myself pondering the parallels between the “day which will live in infamy” (i.e., Pearl Harbor Day) and our own October 7th nightmare.
The comparisons are many and, as is becoming more clear by the day, the end results may proving encouragingly similar.
Both surprise attacks with high casualties and deeply traumatic impacts, December 7th and October 7th triggered the commencement of all-out war. Until Japan made its questionable move that morning, the United States had been immovable in its isolationalist refusal to enter the fray of World War II.
As the smoke cleared from the devastated Hawaiian barracks and oil bubbled eerily to the surface from the sunken U.S.S. Arizona where dying men banged hopelessly and helplessly on the sides of the submerged vessel until their silence marked their horrific demise, a devastated America awoke to a new reality. War was unavoidable because war had come to their doorsteps.
Israelis and Jews the world over, too, awoke on October 7th to the bitter reality of invasion and a new war declared in the most brutal, inhumane, and sickening manner possible.
No one looks back and says, hmmmm, you know, I think the United States should not have declared war on Japan and Germany after war was declared on them per force that day. They should have taken their lumps quietly, buried their dead, and allowed Japan to run riot through the Pacific and threaten our territory and people while Germany overran the rest of the free world. They could have prevented so many lost lives by not fighting back. How dare they?!
Of course not. That would be ludicrous. Once the U.S. had been “suddenly and deliberately attacked,” the illusion of choice dissipated. No sovereign entity has such a choice when thousands of its citizens have been killed in their beds on a Sunday morning without provocation. As FDR aptly stated in his historic, “day of infamy” congressional address, "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people will in their righteous might win through to absolute victory."1
So it is ludicrous to expect the sovereign state of Israel not to retaliate after the brutality of October 7th rent the country to pieces. People were not bombed anonymously from airplanes. The attack was not focused on military installations, but rather peaceful farming communities and a dance festival. Civilians were gunned down point-blank, chased in the streets, raped, burned alive, beheaded, and murdered by all manner of medieval barbarism.
And, of course, Israel had even more reason to retaliate in response to an unprovoked invasion and the murder of 1200 civilians in one day. The enemy stole hundreds of its people and spirited them back to be tortured, starved, and enslaved in underground tunnels.
The hypocrisy of treating these two events as requiring two different responses speaks to the view of many in this darkening world that Jews simply do not have a right to defend themselves. There can be no doubt that the impact of October 7th was far greater upon the tiny Israeli nation, but the expectation by those marching moronically in the streets that Jews deserve brutalization and death and must take it silently speaks to the vast numbers of people who still see Jews as less than human, less than themselves. Oh, the irony of how bigoted the pathological protestors are!
This piece feels like it is getting dark. Fear not! I am about to make a positive pivot. For another parallel between these historic events gives me immense hope for the future of the Middle East region.
Many know that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto meticulously planned the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He carried it out with the full vigor of his training and his position at the helm of the Japanese navy.
But many also forget that he did not fully endorse the plan as it played out. Once it had been decided to attack Pearl Harbor, he threw himself into the role and fulfilled his duty to best of his capacity.
He expressed, however, great doubt as to whether the invasion was strategically wise. Apparently, he spent the day after Pearl Harbor in a state of depression, fearing that Japan had made a grave error in “waking the sleeping giant” of the United States.2 He knew Japan could not win a long, protracted war against the United States, and he had not intended for the surprise attack to initate war. Rather, he had envisioned it as a military action once the two nations were already at war.
By starting the war in this unethical, shocking manner, Japan had predetermined the war’s ending by dragging Americans into the fray. Pearl Harbor galvanized Americans in a way no far-off battles in Europe or China could. Winston Churchill could not have been more relieved, not at American deaths, but at America’s entry into the war at long last which signaled the beginning of the end for the Axis.
Now, let us examine the long-term outcomes of October 7th for the Middle East’s Axis:
It is safe to say that Gaza did not benefit from Hamas’ ill-conceived invasion. Even the swankiest of Gazan neighborhoods built with foreign aid siphoned brazenly by top-tier Hamasniks have been reduced to rubble. When the dust finally settles, Gaza will have reaped a bitter harvest for its actions. As bitter a harvest as that of the Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Not remotely. I certainly do not recollect American forces dropping warning leaflets over the South Pacific before battles or helping Japanese citizens to evacuate to safety zones before creating a nuclear wasteland. But the blame for the unnecessary death and tremendous destruction lies squarely with Hamas and its distant overlords in Iran.
Hizballah has been incinerated. The entirety of its leadership has been wiped out in the most effective game of terrorist bingo ever played. Those terrorists who remain are busy learning how to eat without their fingers and communicate without ’90s beepers. Lebanon is no longer ruled by Iran indirectly through its terrorist proxies. For the first time in decades, the Paris of the Middle East has a chance at rebuilding a healthy, successful society in the absence of foreign invaders. Its citizens can breathe freely and without fear.
Syria has fallen. Assad is ensconced in Moscow with his family and whatever millions he was able to spirit away to his new winter (spring, summer, and fall) retreat. In a remarkably swift and rather brilliant action, Syrian rebels capitalized on the regional chaos, the divided focus of its proxy Iranian leaders, and the evisceration of Hizballah to take the country. Assad should not expect any holiday cards from home any time soon. The evidence of the brutality of his regime being reported daily from prisons filled with women and children to mass graves to torture chambers would disturb the most serene mind. Is the world comfortable with whomever is in charge now? Not quite. Do we trust a former chapter of ISIS to stand by its promise of peace and calm? Not entirely. But in the ensuing chaos, Israel ably emasculated what remained of Syrian armed forces, removed the threat of chemical weapons, confiscated or destroyed conventional weapons, took out the air force on the ground, created a safety zone, and made its control over the situation abundantly clear. Syrian threat to Israeli territorial integrity is now minimal, and Russian and Iranian influence have been severed.
What does it all mean?
As with the Japanese miscalculation at Pearl Harbor, Iran grossly miscalculated the outcome of its regional aggression. For, ultimately, each of these entities was a proxy of the Islamic Regime in Iran that fell domino-style as Iran’s October 7th gamble proved a massive tactical error.
Where does it all end?
One major domino remains to fall. This regional conflict - for it is a full-scale, regional war - can only decisively end when the Ayatollahs themselves fall. The Islamic Regime holding Iran hostage must end before regional stability can be assured. As with Russia, Iran now has shown its comparative military feebleness, its inability to inflict damage even through a barrage of hundreds of missiles. The Islamic Regime stands isolated in the region now, its self-made allies no longer forming the essential wall between it and its self-made enemy: Israel.
Never has the world had a better chance to strip one of the greatest threats to global peace of the final trappings of power. Renewed economic isolation and stranglehold under the incoming U.S. administration may prove the coup de grace.
As Yamamoto noted in a letter to a colleague after Pearl Harbor, “a military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."3
He neither doubted the validity nor result of the inevitable counterattack. He knew he might be able to win the battle and “run wild for six months” in the Pacific, but that, beyond that, he had no chance of winning the war.4
As we see the identical scenario play out in the Middle East this year, keep the end goal in mind. Israel may have lost the battle on October 7th, but it is winning the war. And, as with Japan, that war can only decisively end with the fall of the Islamic Regime in Iran.
FDR’s “Day of Infamy” Speech, Prologue Magazine, Winter 2001. Vol. 33, No. 4.
Agawa, Hiroyuki, The Reluctant Admiral. Kodansha International, 1979, at 259.
Hiroyuki, The Reluctant Admiral at 285.
Fumimaro Konoe, Konoye Ayamaro Ko Shuki (Memoirs of Prince Ayamaro Konoye), Asahi Shimbun-sha, 1946, p. 3.
Completely agree and as always Ellen, well said.