Fouad Ajami describes the war in Afghanistan in very bleak terms. Karzai is even more of a scoundrel than many unseemly past American clients; and he's faced by an American administration particularly unsuited to deal with him.
Many years ago, when I was young and impressionable, there was this idea about how if America let the Communists overrun South Vietnam, there would be a domino effect and the whole region would fall, probably to be followed by worse. Then Kissinger let South Vietnam fall (Kissinger was not anybody's pansy), and lo and behold: there was no domino effect. (But there was a genocide in Cambodia, which was stopped eventually... by the Communist Vietnamese. The world is a complicated place).
Can the world afford America to retreat, effectively vanquished, from Afghanistan? No-one talks anymore about domino effects, but might there be one anyway? I don't know.
when I look at my little globe I guess that having muscular alas American only presences in both Iraq and Afghanistan should make Iran feel weary (whether that will turn out to be a good or a bad thing only the future will show)
ReplyDeleteas I remember the Domino meme it predicted bang after bang after bang downfall. I found and find the concept of Salami-Tactic more plausible, one thin almost imperciptible slice at a time and believe that currently wherever the "west" blinks another slice has been chopped of and encourages the choppers to go on chopping.
So maybe initially putting up a "no further" stopper in Vietnam wasn't such a bad idea but things tend to have the devilish tendency to develop in unforeseen ways.
Silke
What exactly is the mission in Afghanistan? And how does achieving that mission help keep America safe, Western Europe from becoming further colonized by the followers of Islam and nuclear weapons out of the planet's scariest regimes?
ReplyDeleteThe mission is confused and ever changing: win hearts and minds, prevent the Taliban from retaking Afghanistan, protect the current government, keep Al Qaeda from setting up training camps, train Afghan security forces, promote democracy, defeat "extremism," develop infrastructure, build mosques, etc.
Most of these goal are impossible to achieve and we end up supporting one corrupt and brutal warlord, regime or tribe against another that appears slightly worse. Meanwhile many of the troops we are training end up deserting or attacking our soldiers. In the end, we are wasting lives, money and morale on a hopeless endeavor. Afghanistan has no strategic value to the United States and few, if any, cultural or religious values that we can in good conscience support and which we are powerless to change.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks did not originate in Afghanistan. The terrorists entered the United States legally and took flying lessons at our schools. They were funded by rich Arabs, not by Saudis. They were indoctrinated to fight jihad in European mosques before ever training in Afghanistan.
Rather than having so many people killed and wounded in needless wars, and our money poured down the bottomless pit of Afghanistan, how about instead not giving visas to Muslims? The Sept. 11 attacks could not have happened had not those 19 men been welcomed onto our soil.
Enough is enough. The Muslim world shouldn't get to promote hatred and incite violence against non-Muslims, trash the West and cheer the terrorist attacks against our people and then have access to our superior doctors, universities and way of life when they feel like it. We need to disengage as much as possible with the Muslim world until that time when the Muslim world decides to educate its people to conduct themselves in a different fashion. Those leaders and imams who send their children here for education and fly here for medical care are the same ones who publish hatred in their state-sponsored newspapers and preach jihad in their mosques. Let them reap the fruits of their own teachings in their own countries. We have enough problems to deal with here without importing people who hate us.
previous post should have read "funded by rich Arabs, not by Afghans."
ReplyDeleteI've never been able to understand the Yanks with their foreign policy. It's been said that every war is the generals refighting the last war and the US is testamant to that. They make exactly the same mistakes every time, from Vietnam through to Afghanistan. It's obvious to anyone outside the US that you can't invade another country and expect people there to like you.
ReplyDeleteThe US talk about promoting democracy and yet they tacitly support corruption by the ruling authority. People aren't stupid, they know when their govt is corrupt and with their inaction the Yanks are always seen as complicit. "hearts & minds" is one of the most absurd scenarios I've ever seen, whoever thinks they're winning hearts & minds is away with the fairies.
From a military standpoint the US also bollocks it up every time. It doesn't take much of a tactician to realise that if you can't secure the borders you just do not go in. A local insurgency can be contained, an insurgency supported by a neighbour, with safe harbours for the insurgents, cannot. How obvious is that, how many times have the Yanks learnt that lesson? And yet still they blunder in, time and bloody time again.
The best move for the US in Afghanistan is to lay the law down. Corruption stops now or we leave. Period. Get out, and use the corruption of Karzai and the govt as the excuse... force the issue and make it the big deal. The tragedy is if they'd done that five years ago the place might even be peaceful by now.
Gavin
Gavin,
ReplyDeleteAfghanistan has never been a peaceful place with a government that give a hoot about its citizens. It is a country of different tribes with different languages who don't see themselves as one people. Loyalty in that country goes to the family, clan and tribe. It is only natural that the government would be corrupt in that type of society where looking out for one's own family, clan and tribe, and taking care of the warlords who support you, are the ways to stay alive.
In the same vein, many Pashtun villagers support the Taliban because that is where the power lies in their village and going against their family and clan leaves them with nowhere to turn for work, food and protection. Those that oppose the Taliban have similar motivations.
The US and its allies treat those who reject the Taliban as choosing moderation over extremism, women's rights over women's enslavement and democracy over theocracy. I would surmise that none of those considerations--all filtered through a Western lens--come into play. While the Taliban is particularly vile, the attitudes and values of the "moderates" aren't much more enlightened.
You are right. Find an excuse such as the corruption of the government and leave. Get out now, take your weapons with you and don't come back unless it is to take out a terrorist training camp from the air. And stop the farce that giving billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan will made that duplicitous and Islamist hotbed "an important ally in the war on terror."
Aye, the corruption won't end so the US can use it as a lever to pull out without it being seen as a military defeat. The Yanks should have realised that anyone in the chain of authority would get busy salting away as much cash as they could for the time when the US pulled out and they had to retire elsewhere on their ill-gotten gains.
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest irony of both the Iraqi and Afghanistan campaigns is that the richest country in the world never woke up to the fact that they could have won both battles by buying them. All they had to do was control the purse strings, and through that they had control of the country. The insurgency in both countries was driven by cannon fodder... the unemployed & desperate who'd plant bombs etc for a few $$. The Yanks just needed to pay more... that's all they had to do. After that they just had to make sure it was they who dished out the cash and that it went straight to the people who it was intended for and not filched along the way. They could hire half the country to fight the Taliban and it would cost a fraction of what it costs to keep NATO troops there. Stupid.
Gavin
Gavin
ReplyDeleteyou forget that they have invaded Germany and were made welcome, look at the cheering crowds and things staid pretty much quiet after that and we young ones really loved them. I don't know how things were in Japan but in Germany, every time a group left their leaving was mourned by everybody.
what they forget is that they bombed reason into the city-dwellers who by the time they finally arrived would have probably welcomed anybody promising them a good night's sleep. The short term effect of aerial bombing may not have been what the Allies expected but forcing urbanites to live very complicated lives for years, made them quite compliant.
I believe they think it was their smiles that did it, that certainly were no hindrance, at least to us kids and to their Fräuleins the soldiers were kind, really kind and the Fräuleins were generous in sharing with kind neighbours.
and now I see pictures of a soldier smiling that lovely American smile at some kids in Iraq and he is obviously incapable of realizing that their smile back is mixed with a sneer.
Silke
Silke,
ReplyDelete"and now I see pictures of a soldier smiling that lovely American smile at some kids in Iraq and he is obviously incapable of realizing that their smile back is mixed with a sneer."
The reason for the hostility in Afghanistan and Iraq is Islam, which divides the world into two groups, believers and infidels, who are in a perpetual state of war until the who world submits to the rule of Islam.
Germany and Japan had adopted fanatical, racist and hateful ideologies and did horrific and evil things. However, once they were defeated and the charismatic regimes were crushed, the ideologies embodied by those regimes and the cult of personality of their leaders were demonstrated as having brought misery, the people could move in a different direction.
The difference with the Islamic countries is that their charismatic leader is Muhammad, so that defeating this or that regime doesn't discredit the perfect man or the holy faith that he embodies. Furthermore, the allies who defeated Germany and Japan in WW2 were committed to destroying the ideologies guiding those countries into war. With Islam, the United States has been unwilling to tackle the ideology that motivates its enemies. Instead it has decided that the doctrine that motivates the enemy is a religion that must be respected and even promoted. The enemy's doctrine is treated as a virtue and so the source of that hostility will not decrease in any meaningful way. Sure the local populations may feign friendship to get guns and money from the infidel Americans, but like their Koran teaches them, they smile in our faces while cursing us in their hearts.
Totally different scenario Silke. The Yanks didn't invade Germany, they were at war and the US was on the winning side. In Iraq & Afghanistan the US went in as liberators and when the people saw they'd merely swapped one corrupt regime for another they gradually turned against the US... why would Iraqis & Afghans support them after all when nothing had improved?
ReplyDeleteThe lesson of Vietnam and other insurgencies is that the only people who can fix a country's troubles is those who live there. Outsiders will always end up as the enemy unless they can establish the rule of law and good governance... and then leave running the country to the locals. Nothing else matters, democracy by itself doesn't mean a thing to people on the street.
Afghans may be tribal but they still have a sense of national identity... same as every other country. The US have ignored or missed that at their peril.
Gavin
Gavin
ReplyDeletemy point was not the different scenario but that it took years of inflicting hardship and by today's standards unacceptable toughness to bomb the Master Race Belief out of people (and judging from my age cohort, lots of it survived, but the rubble in the cities was useful to keep them in check) - no shock and awe and so little damage that it is quickly removed from the public eye there. The reminder of what Master-Racism had given to us was around for ages and no matter how much some may have yearned for further pursuing it the reminder of the price to pay remained very physically there. (In 1960 I lived for a time in Frankfurt in a half-bombed out building with water only on the ground floor and that was not unusual)
when I am in my most cynic mood I say the one big mistake the US made both in Iraq and Afghanistan was to say they didn't want to occupy. Assuming that at least city dwellers know exactly how much Germany and Japan profited from having gotten occupied, they feel treated by comparison as of minor worth/importance.
(Yes, we the dumb masses think like that and it actually synchs quite well with your buy-them scenario.)
Silke
If you want cynical Silke then maybe the US got such a great reception in Germany because they weren't the Russians.... ?
ReplyDeleteGavin
ReplyDeletecertainly that was part of it but they lived up to the expectation
it was also that women/mothers had had it (can you imagine what it must have been like to have to grab your toddler at short notice and run with him and a backpack to the next shelter hoping that the house would be still there afterwards?) Women are said to have been enthusiastic about Hitler, well some nights of the above probably helped to chip away at the romantics of it all and I guess that they told their eager to "resist" boys "don't you dare!" and put them to work, pillaging for whatever could be found -
I judge from how I experienced my elders while growing up and there the perception is they were tired, worn out, exhausted, they wanted to get a life and be left alone - that the Russians looming across the border was no hindrance but that life for people under communism had its advantages was also widely believed by the time I became a newspaper reader. I remember reports galore about things that were better in the DDR, most prominently a glowing Spiegel-report about the miracles of Plattenbauten which upon unification were considered the poster-child for the ugliness of the "other Germany". http://www.eol-reisen.de/images/18_koenigsberg_plattenbau1_kern_l.jpg
btw chats about memories of occupation in the British zone differ quite a bit from those in the US-zone (always talking about my generation), no surprise, the Brits were far from being rich themselves. and Americans have a way of endearing themselves on a personal level (they were by far the best behaved tourists on "my" Greek island) (which doesn't keep them from being unsufferable we-know-bests at other times)
judging on my observations alone there is also a big difference between rural and urban memories of MasterRacism, the rural tending to remain much more convinced that there is something to the myth of Germans being somehow more of whatever.
Silke
Gavin and Silke,
ReplyDeleteWhile you are both wise to look at lessons the U.S. could have learned from previous wars and occupations, the real folly of the American political and military leadership has been in not learning more about Afghanistan and Iraq. Had President Bush even read a little bit about Britain's experiences in the 1920's, he could possibly have been surprised to learn that among the Muslims there were both Sunni and Shia. President Obama has displayed the sam ignorance and indifference to reality of his predecessor.
Gavin, I think you are far overstating the role of Afghan nationalism. Not all nations, especially in the Islamic world, view the nation-state as an important institution where loyalty should be given (laws come from Allah, not Kabul). I also think you are overstating the corruption argument. Sure "our ally" in Kabul is a corrupt and repulsive figure. But there is no other paradigm for leadership that any Afghans would recognize. You go into politics, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, to increase your own wealth and that of your family and clan. That is a logic that makes sense to both supporters and opponents of the current regime in Kabul.
Silke,
There is a place where MasterRacism is alive and well: the Islamic world, where Muslims are supposed to be supreme and Arabs are considered the best of people. It is their ideology that is destined to spread across the globe, ruling and subduing all the inferior peoples. Their Hitler is Muhammad and their dogma is akin to fascism. The difference is that when Germany was defeated in WW2, many Germans lost the idea of Hitler as the perfect embodiment of his people, as following him brought destruction, misery and suffering. When Muslims suffer defeats on the battlefield, Muhammad remains the perfect man, and they redouble their efforts to live up to his example. Muhammad wasn't defeated, only his imperfect followers. Thus, the unchanging nature of Islamic societies in comparison to places like Germany or Japan.
Returning to one of Yaacov's points, I think a judgment on the domino theory is dependent on how many dominoes one claims are necessary for confirmation. Demonstrably, it was the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia that ultimately led to the Khmer Rouge victory there. The North Vietnamese, because they were not defeated, were able, literally, to assume the major combat role from the Pathet Lao and defeat the Lao army. Had the U.S. been victorious in Vietnam - an impossibility, I believe - neither of these eventualities would have come to pass. It was certainly a limited domino effect. One lesson is that it didn't have the significance on an international level, among the major contending forces, that was predicted of it.
ReplyDelete4infidels. I'm not overstating nationalism, just saying it exists. Tribalism is just a manifestation of the principle of safety in numbers. Afghanistan is a desperately poor and lawless country, in the absence of strong governance people fall back onto tribalism for security... in the absence of tribe it would fall back to clans.. then family etc. In olden days there were city states for the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteI think the west has trouble understanding that many of the values we hold dear are luxuries that people in poor countries simply can't afford. Few Afganis would hold any sort of master muslim race views, they're too busy eking out a living to harbour such visions of grandeur.
I'm not sure what others have observed but the only notable beacons of hope I saw in Iraq and Afganistan was their respective national armies. In Afghanistan the Yanks have assumed that democracy would bring good governance and they've taken no precautions to ensure the army stayed corruption free. The whole pay & provisioning structure of the army has subsequently become infested with graft and the soldiery has lost its motivation. The US needed to insert themselves at key levels so they had complete control over the provisioning and pay of the military while still ceding authority to the local government. There's more they needed to do such as higher pay, pensions for the dead & wounded families etc, but essentially they had to isolate the army from the graft of Government. The US had the right idea but their lack of understanding of poor countries is so total they neglected the most important (and obvious) parts.
Gavin
Gavin,
ReplyDeleteI think much of what you say about America's mistakes is on target. I just take the position that even if America had not made those mistakes, the larger goals were unreachable.
There is a bit of "what came first, the chicken or egg" in our discussion.
You attribute the tribalism as the result of poverty, lawlessness and a weak central government. I see the weak central government, poverty and lawlessness as the result of a tribalism. There is little concept of an "Afghan people" and the defining national Afghan custom seems to be making war on other villages and tribes or within tribes.
Only the discovery of oil enabled the Saudis to transform Arabia from a similar society to one of affluence. And yet the Saudis, for all their wealth, have not been able to establish a productive economic life beyond the sale of oil. While these may be extreme examples (Saudi Arabia being the birthplace of Islam and Islam's hold on life is particularly strong; Afghanistan having a rough terrain, though the desert in Arabia is no walk in the park either, and Islam plays a part in Afghanistan as well) there are certain similarities in the histories of these societies that also appear in Iraq. Wealth and an autocratic, oppressive central government may hold these forces in check for a while, but they remain simmering under the surface, as the U.S. found out after removing Saddam Hussein's regime. Not always to the same degree, this is the story throughout the Muslim Middle East and Muslim Southeast Asia, in both the poor countries and the wealthy countries.
Of course tribal conflicts, poverty and corrupt governments are not unique to Islamic societies. However, societies suffused with Islam are particularly resistant to nation building due to the hostility Islam inculcates toward the Infidel. That same hostility spills over into how different groups manage their relations with one another within these countries. So while these problems are not unique to the Islamic world, they are remarkably consistent throughout the dar al-Islam.
4infidels. I'm not really sure how to read that. I can't see any relationship between tribes and Muslims, in Islam there would only be the one tribe surely..? (Africa is very tribal too remember) It's posible that tribalism has endured longer in Mulsim countries but I don't see any evidence of that, seems to be more of a link between lawlessness and tribalism than religion and tribalism.
ReplyDeleteI'm not anti-US but I have grown weary of their bull in a china shop approach to foreign affairs and I never held out much hope they'd succeed in Iraq and Afhanistan but that's not to say they couldn't have. Each needed a different approach and I think in Iraq Bush lost his bottle. Personally I think a peaceful solution in Iraq was only possible if the US had been prepared to bomb Syrian and Iranian military bases every time an IED went off. They'd have gotten the message quick enough if the Yanks had been determined to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. I don't know why the US allowed Syria and Iran to undermine the rebuilding of Iraq.
Gavin
1)
ReplyDeleteback in school in the 50s there was consensus among my teachers (history, geography, religion plus probably in a lot of others) that the Koran demanded of Muslims to spread the religion by the sword. No idea why it was so hammered in at the time given that I have reason to suspect that at least some of my teachers had been victims of MasterRacism).
2.
as to the winnability of Vietnam, Conrad Black seems to hold a different opinion - as he recently wrote a biography of Nixon I wonder whether he has a point. It is a long piece, so ctrl-F for Vietnam and Nixon is advised except for those of us who may enjoy his attacks on star-journalists in this piece.
http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/murdoch-4267
3.
I don't doubt that more generous bombings by the US might have saved all in all a lot of lives and misery but since the US wants to be smiled on by friends and allies it was out of the question even for a superpower and that's only one of the reasons, why they couldn't do it.
Silke
You're probably right on 3. Silke but the US just had to keep Iran away from Iraq while they rebuilt it and the only practical way they could achieve that was by blunt force. They also needed Syria to police their border to stop insurgents flooding into Iraq.
ReplyDeleteThe bloodbath that Iraq turned into was almost entirely down to Iran, with Syria also culpable. Iran was never going to get the support of the Shia majority because there's too much antipathy between Arabs and Persians. Most Arabs hate Persians more than Arab Shias love Iranian Shias. So Iran supported the radical Shias of Sadr who, as extremists, put religion before race & nationality. That started the internecine slaughter and Iran was complicit throughout. In Iraq the US failed to protect their borders yet again. They never learn.
Gavin
Gavin/Silke,
ReplyDeleteOn the previous point, Gavin couldn't be more right. Regardless of whether "the mission" in Iraq was doable, it is really hard to believe that the American government would allow Iran and Syria to kill our soldiers in Iraq, and those Iraqis working with the U.S., with impunity. In fact, given the Bush administration's enthusiasm for making the Iraq project work, and its deeply stated belief in how crucial this was to the overall security of the region and the U.S., why did the Bush administration hide the role of Iran and Syria in killing American soldiers and fomenting all sorts of murderous/terroristic attacks on Iraqi civilians?
This thinking was further supported when the moronic Iraq Study Group recommendations came out and indicated that the US needed Iran's help to stabilize Iraq and that pressuring Israel to turn over land to the Arabs would somehow win Arab hearts and minds in support of America's democracy project. As though Iran and the Arab regimes, and many of their people, didn't have their own very logical reasons for not wanting a Western-style democracy imposed in the region that threatened their own regimes and cultural-religious way of life. While the Bush administration ultimately didn't embrace the whole Iraq Study Group agenda, I believe there was a desire not antagonize Iran and Syria by calling them on the carpet, so that somehow, someway they could be co-opted to play a constructive role in Iraq. This sent a terrible message of weakness to all the worst actors in the region and demoralized those genuine Arab and Persian liberals who hoped that what democracy and secular values would spread to their countries. Probably even worse, from their perspective, was the U.S. making Sharia Law a significant part of the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan--done in order to show respect for Islam--which thus allowed the religious and political forces to override the nice human rights language in those constitutions.
(continued)
Adding insult to injury, the Obama administration then came in, bent its knee, offered flowers, Israeli territory and kisses to Iran and Syria, believing that our differences were all the result of misunderstandings and American crimes and arrogance past and present, all of which could be solved with apologies and dialogue. The idea that what Iran and Syria wanted most was respect and legitimization by the West, and to play what we would consider a constructive role in the "international community," reeks of condescension disguised as constructive engagement. They were following the sort of superficial logic of the Fareed Zakaria types who believe that Syria's alliance with Iran is "unnatural" because of Syria's Arab identity, and that the way to isolate Iran (thus making it amenable to American demands, so this line of thinking went) was to entice Syria back into the Arab camp with the incentive of a peace treaty (like that would really make the Syrian regime feel more secure!!!) with Israel and the return of the Golan Heights. What about the logic of the Syrian-Iran alliance? Syria relies on exploiting Lebanon for its economy and benefits from Iran's Shiite-Hezbollah interests there, serving Iran in return by providing the path to arming Iran's proxies in Lebanon. Syria's Alawite regime wants to avoid being overthrown and its co-religionists massacred by the Sunni majority that they ruthlessly rule. Why would aligning with the Sunni Arab regimes, the West or signing a peace agreement with Israel serve their primary concern, staying in power? From Iran, the Alawites get credibility as Muslims; from their support of Hamas and Hezbollah they get credibility on the "Arab street"; from their exploitation of Lebanon they get money to keep their allies at home from getting restless. Bashir Assad is an evil man, but he knows better than Washington how to survive in a dangerous region surrounded by those who want his family and sect wiped out to the last person. As Gavin rightly points out, American bombs would be persuasive in changing the behavior of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, and the only appropriate response to their sabotaging of American efforts in Iraq. If you are truly committed to making the Iraq project a success--something I don't think is possible--then step up and do what needs to be done. Otherwise, get out and let the Muslims return to their natural state of fighting amongst themselves, so long as they don't acquire nuclear weapons or threaten U.S. interests. For a brief moment after taking out Saddam, the U.S. had put the fear of Allah into the dictatorial and theocratic regimes in the Middle East. Had we left quickly, leaving the Iraqis to work things out for themselves, other regimes would have received the lesson that their own survival would be in doubt if they crossed the Americans. Instead, America has sent the message that if you want to defeat the West, use low level attacks and draw the US into long, drawn out commitments, causing a death by a thousand cuts.
ReplyDelete4infidels. Yeah. I was against the US going into Iraq but once there I certainly wanted them to succeed and they just had to do whatever was necessary. Instead they held back, for unfathomable reasons. It must be a pretty bitter pill for the troops to swallow when they saw Iran killing their fellow soldiers with impunity. The US govt needs to wake up to the fact that Iran has been at war against the US since the overthrow of the Shah. Ok so they use proxies & fight to the last Lebanese or Iraqi.. but it's still a war. It's well past payback time... leave it too long and it might be too late.
ReplyDeleteGavin
I was against the US going into Iraq but once there I certainly wanted them to succeed
ReplyDeleteme too (or is I too correct?) - I had been made "wise" by having read a Gertrude Bell biography a year or two before (Robert Graves claims that Lawrence of Arabia could have become elected king, had he wanted so. He wanted to have nothing of it. Maybe he knew a bit or two
I just wish I'd know more as to whether with all the death and misery having resulted from it, it would be better NOW to establish a base in order to provide a better threat to Iran or not.
My moment of realisation that it will all end up in another big mess came when within maybe two or three days Odierno had two interviews in the London Times. In the first sounding like a confident General on the path to possible victory in the second like a pre-recorded tape i.e. Iraq was abondoned in order to pursue the even less promising Afghanistan-project.
But as I learn from the History of Venice I am reading right now, messing things up militarily pretty regularly is what leaders do all the time. I only wish it wouldn't entail so much human suffering.
and yes I agree that connecting it all to Israel doing this or that is lunacy. The opposite might make sense, supporting Israel unequivocally might convince the nutters that the US isn't a paper tiger (which it isn't but which "they" like to make themselves believe).
Silke
I am just listening to this and it makes me wonder, what we would have written into our comments at the time provided we had been informed about the goings on
ReplyDeleteSilke
http://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/905-the-pacific-from-pearl/id186884743?i=86372626
905 The Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Midway
On the morning of 7th of December 1941 the Japanese launched Operation Z, the surprise attack on the American Naval base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This was the start of the War in the Pacific. Like a typhoon Imperial Japanese forces were unleashed across the Pacific and for almost six months had victory after victory. Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, the Philippines, Burma all would fall, the Japanese had swept across the Pacific knocking on the doors of both Australia and India, even the American presence in the Pacific would be under threat.
http://www.thehistorynetwork.org/TheHistoryNetwork/Military_History.html