I don't think Japan was interested in destroying our entire military capacity, just enough to get us out of the Pacific. It wasn't a radically dissimilar aim th

I don't think Japan was interested in destroying our entire military capacity, just enough to get us out of the Pacific. It wasn't a radically dissimilar aim than Al Qaeda's goal to get us out of the Islamic world, though just about everything else about the two events was different. As for a terrorist attack being "a prelude to ... nothing much", you know there was a first World Trade Center bombing, right?