The problem with this school of thought is that it essentially says "let's lose the bulk of our Pacific fleet and have to spend a couple years rebuilding, to ge

The problem with this school of thought is that it essentially says "let's lose the bulk of our Pacific fleet and have to spend a couple years rebuilding, to get a sufficiently strong cause for war." This is absurd on its face, especially when you consider that successfully repelling a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would achieve the same thing without the massive loss in men and material, and allow the U.S. to go on the offensive immediately, before Japan consolidated its Pacific holdings. Besides, at the time of the attack, public sentiment was 2:1 in favour of risking war with Japan to curtail its expansion; German submarines were already sinking U.S. ships in the Atlantic. The U.S. public had already swung towards war with both powers. The PR boost of the attack wasn't needed.