I’ve always been a student of military history and the naval battles in the Pacific in WW2 were some of the first I ever read about and studied.
Pearl Harbor can teach us still to never underestimate a determined and intelligent enemy, especially one who feels that they have run out of alternatives that will let them maintain their standing, or as they put it in the East, their “face”.
War is about winning, and trying to surprise an enemy is to be expected. What was unexpected at Pearl Harbor was the incompetence of US military intelligence, the lack of preparedness of General Short and Admiral Kimmel, the lack of imagination among many American leaders as to what the Japanese were capable of.
Considering 9-11, some of those lessons were forgotten. And though you may not be as big a fan of them as I am, Shmoel, the Israeli military and security apparatus, while far from perfect, and while having suffered from the same complacency before the Yom Kippur War, at least now lack no imagination in considering what our enemies want to do to us – Israelis, Jews, wherever we are – and acting first to foil their plans.