December 6, 2014|10:15 am

The conditions that led to the Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii exist today, on an even broader scale.

The United States was in a high state of vulnerability on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 a date President Franklin Roosevelt declared would "live in infamy." But it was also a day full of lessons vital for our times.

Enemies probe the vulnerable points and seek to exploit them, as the Japanese did. States whose strategic thinking is based on delusion are the most exposed.

Hillary Clinton was right December 3 when she said at George Washington University that the United States should use "every tool and partner" in pursuit of peace. But then Mrs. Clinton said America should try to "empathize" with its enemies, understanding their "perspective and point of view."

One can trust empathetic leaders who are also realists, but progressives are prone to romantic idealism which forms delusory policies that make their nations more vulnerable. Here are six varieties:

1The delusion of invulnerability

America in the first half of the 20th century was still under the spell of 18th century manifest destiny doctrine (the idea of the inherent right to westward expansion), the adventurism of Theodore Roosevelt, the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, and the seemingly heroic stature of Franklin D. Roosevelt. American Christianity too easily became a syncretism of the Bible and the cultural ethos of that period (as it is now in a much different way).

Albrecht Furst von Urach was a Nazi journalist stationed at one point in Tokyo. Writing in 1942, von Urach characterized Japan's 80-year rise to "world power" status as "the greatest miracle in world history." The secret was the Samurai spirit, and its idea of the nobility of warfare, made transcendent in the Zen Buddhism and Shintoism of the era, thought von Urach. Japan's army was a "spiritual school," favoring the "strength of the spirit over the strength of the material."1

America's sense of invulnerability resulted in a lack of preparedness. Japan's delusionary confidence in her invulnerability drew her to overreach, and launch war against a foe that would guarantee her defeat and humiliation.

See the original post:
Pearl Harbor: 6 Things We Should Remember to Avoid Repeating History (Pt. 1)