At the same time, they had the initiative. We needed to win the court of public appeal to get into the war. So because of that, we had to sit on our heels and wait for them to attack us. And in modern war, the side with the initiative generally has the advantage. And in this case, the American people gave the Japanese the initiative because we weren't interested in fighting the war.

So we could have done things better for sure, but they were still going to have the advantage because they had the initiative. Even if we had done better at Pearl Harbor, they still would have wrecked us in the Philippines and wherever else they attacked at that stage. We didn't have the forces to be spread out that much. Different topic, but trying to defend the Philippines was stupid. There's no way we could have done it successfully. Once we became convinced that we were going to fight the Japanese at some point, we should have evacuated the island.