The country’s enemies always forget the can-do spirit of the American people.
Isoroku Yamamoto studied at Harvard and traveled around the United States. When he put together his program to bomb Pearl Harbor and take the Philippines, he warned the Japanese high command that he would dominate the Pacific Ocean for six months. After that, American production capacity would end his reign and lead to a war of equals. Even with the warning, the Japanese went ahead and conquered many colonial outposts. There was genuine fear in Australia that they would be overrun by the Japanese. My father arrived in Sydney in September of 1939 and said that when a Japanese midget submarine attacked the USS Chicago in Sydney Harbor, the country became hysterical that they would fall like the others.
The turning point in the Pacific War came in June 1942, almost exactly six months after the dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor. I have heard that the US Navy has two holidays, one on the day of its founding and the other on June 4th, the day on which the Battle of Midway began. The American fleet never looked back, moving its way across the Pacific until the USS Missouri stood in Tokyo Bay and hosted the formal surrender ceremony of the Japanese under the direction of Supreme Allied Commander, Douglas MacArthur.
Yamamoto knew what he spoke about: America’s potential production juggernaut. At the height of war production, a B-24 bomber was produced every 63 minutes. The fastest production of a Liberty Ship—the type desperately needed to keep up with German U-boat losses—was less than five days. For comparison, the USS Gerald Ford, which I hope to see should she make a port call in Haifa, required 12 years to construct. Don’t think that the Japanese alone were blind to the awesome production capabilities of the United States. Hitler blithely declared war on the US after FDR declared war on Japan. On the one hand, he was honoring his treaty obligations with the Japanese and what German would not do exactly what was required of him? On the other hand, he did the US president a huge favor. The Tucker Carlson of the day was Charles Lindbergh, who claimed that any war in Europe would be for the benefit of the Jews. FDR could do little more than use lend-lease to keep Churchill and Stalin in the war. Hitler’s move brought the US right into the European theater and eventual victory.
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Why was Hitler so glib about declaring war on the American behemoth and not keeping her out of the European war? Hitler confided to his aides that he expected the US to reach technological and military parity with the Third Reich in 1970 — nearly 30 years after the US entered the war. And the Führer had reason for such a view. The Germans had the best tanks, the first jet fighter, the most successful submarine fleet, the first cruise and ballistic missiles, and top generals like Rommel, Manstein and Guderian. Hitler no doubt based his views on America’s military strength on the known weakness of American forces after World War I. I remember seeing an Army training video in which soldiers practiced on artillery pieces by putting a can of soup in the breech, due to a lack of actual projectiles for testing. The US was not prepared for World War II, but she got up to speed very quickly and also surpassed her friends and foes in terms of quantity and quality of war equipment. I bored my kids when I showed them all of the unique features of a B-29 bomber at the March AFB Museum.
North Korea did not expect a strong US response when it all but gobbled up South Korea during the opening phase of the Korean War. They did not count on MacArthur and his brilliant Inchon landing, with US forces eventually making it all the way up to the Yalu River and the Chinese border. Saddam also belittled American military might and bellowed that his desert would become “another Vietnam” for the US forces. General Arnold Schwarzkopf and his professional staff made sure that the Iraqis suffered heavily at the hands of the combined forces that destroyed his regular army and the Republican Guard. The A-10 was a tank killer, and the Iraqis were kicked out of Kuwait and driven up north by highly professional air and ground forces that defined American military prowess for a generation.
Iran joins the long list of America doubters. The Iranians last summer warned that they would knock out any American attack; instead, dozens of American planes dominated the skies as six B-2 bombers delivered their devastating payload precisely over the target. Their pre-approved retribution was a missile attack on an empty airbase in Qatar. The Iranians are talking again. American war planners do not underestimate the enemy. Rather, they objectively weigh the capabilities and plan their attacks accordingly. I am certain that Pentagon brass is not ignoring Iranian capabilities. Rather, they factor in Iranian air defenses and other assets and then plan to wipe them out or overwhelm them. The Iranians would have been far more threatening had they kept their mouths shut, but like Hitler and Tojo, they don’t think much of those Yankee cowboys. They completely fail to understand American adaptability and ability to make quick corrections. I don’t know if there will be a war, but the feeling in Israel is that there will be and soon. Israel called back ex-military and intelligence officials from outside the country, something I do not recall ever happening. We just received a smiling brochure from Jerusalem city hall that conveniently listed all of the public bomb shelters in the city.
But it is not just America’s external enemies who underestimate her prodigious capabilities. Paul Ehrlich’s infamous book, The Population Bomb, was a modern Malthusian screed based on all technology stopping while the number of human beings kept growing. Like America’s external enemies, he never took into account the technology improving crop yields or the quality of life. Much of the UN’s efforts are based on false assumptions about the future. The US has been, for decades, the world leader in making the impossible a reality. Look at the biggest technology companies that have revolutionized our lives and they are virtually all American. We have travel, communication, health, and military capabilities that no one would have imagined in the 1950s. Due to the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the ability of successful inventors to keep the vast majority of their wealth, Americans create, improve, tinker, and succeed. The atomic bomb project went from theory to BOOM in only a couple of years. Boeing and Lockheed overtook their British competition for commercial jets in the 1950s, even though the Brits had working jet engines before the Americans. If you tell an American that something is impossible, you have all but guaranteed that he will succeed.
America’s enemies underestimate Her abilities because Americans work quietly and efficiently. Unlike Saddam and the Ayatollah, they don’t scream and threaten; rather, they work diligently away from the spotlights and get the job done. Many prognosticated that Desert Storm would be a long slog, like Vietnam. Instead, the actual ground campaign to eject Saddam’s forces from Kuwait lasted 100 hours. If President Trump gives the green light, the US will hit hard and often. The Iranians won’t know what him them. They will try to shoot back, but they won’t be able to absorb the intense attack that will be unleashed upon them. War is never pretty, but the goal is to apply overwhelming force to subdue an enemy in the shortest time possible. If it goes kinetic, it will be a very intense, mostly one-sided battle.
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