Some of history's greatest moments, are watershed humankind changing moments. Events which have been first labeled as unimaginably blundering and Indigestible mistakes. Because the culture up to then had not the rationale nor experience, much less the vision to recognize what was taking place! What was a new defining global factor was rejected universally as deception based. What is the reaction when such mistakes are redeemed? Learning from something absurdly mistaken in its time, without which we might well otherwise never have learned!
Painful beyond toleration political decisions are of this type. We fail to have the "You'd better believe this" attitude, because beyond experiential based public comprehension does not exist. And all the think tanks see such courses as what the populace, nor the superiors will never countenance. Riddled with catastrophe and unacceptable possible demands. The most unacceptable in popular comfortable western culture is mortality... Yet eventually shifting the slope of humankind's course has never not demanded some sacrifice, of comfort life and limb!
When this time it's not the same, and this time is truly different.
The time is December 7th 1941, the place is Honolulu... but this time is truly different... They weren't only confused, their mind set was rigid and held captive in what had been. Their minds were saturated with what they thought had always been the truth. What they were witnessing was an impossibility, and therefore they were unprepared, and this could not be a reality. They could not react.... what was happening seemed like something torn from a comic book, a pure fantasy, a nightmare... a dream run amok. What happens when shock takes effect, and body functions go into total arrest, is frozen immobility.
What was being witnessed was not happening. it was too unimaginable! This had to be another Orson Wells Martian attack thriller. Not real! A a figment of imagination!
Lined up like books in a library, the fleet like giant ships upon a painted ocean. Who could imagine this bizarre tale of horror and catastrophe which was unwinding. This couldn't be real, not this! Flames erupted! Explosions everywhere, people running wildly.... no one knew what to do. The rigidity of people petrified in shock held rule! Sensual overload, reduced even the bravest defenders to cowering in cover.
He could see their faces! Their concentrated grimaces. Like diving seagulls, shrieking as if a hunger crazed horde. But these were not wild birds! At first unable to react, his instincts cut in. He caught himself... he caught himself in a moment as he nearly waved back at one! His American instincts were open friendliness! But this was not a time to wave... this was not yet Christmas, and these were not Santa's reindeer!
Unimagined in all the scenarios of what to be prepared for, what he was witnessing had never made the list. Never could his culture project what he was seeing. The personell in all those brain stormed scenarios were persons like him and like his. He blinked... the scene unrolling before his eyes did not relent, there were no Orson Wells commercial breaks. This wasn't fiction, this was really happening! How could he and his superiors have been so blind as to what was possible! How could they not have considered this. And if they had, what the hell could they have done to prepare? And who would have had the nerve to accept responsibility for the panic such a scenario warned would have started?
Diving behind a building, he took cover... but his ears, and his nose didn't need line of sight. This was hell happening in Pearl Harbor! He imagined how hell smelled, and how hell sounded. And the trumpeting of Japanese planes in screaming suicidal dives, and the shrill cries of agony, all added to stun him more! This unimaginable cacophony... the piccolos and brassy cymbals of a symphony macabre!
In Tokyo many years earlier the germ of this hellish scenario was born... Seemingly as irrational as it was to Western Culture, it was seen nearly the same to the new breed of military Japanese traditionalists. Its time had not yet come, when such could be raised to the most holy of pinnacles! Far too dangerously likely to cause panic in the rural tranquility, from which Japan would conscript. Not only on those quiet farms, but in the urban streets.
And from all the world hidden there were those most august halls of Imperial regality, where Japan's living God deity reigned peacefully. Where in those gardens of serenity cherry blossoms set the tone. And where propositions of Asia free were alive.
There is what is known as "the right time and the right place.." and the bearer of this creative gem, knew his impassioned patriotic revelation was neither. But among his youthful cadre, such thought as he proposed was not forbidden. Hatched by the exuberance of youthful inspiration, nothing, not any notion was taboo. Toss before them this religiously inspired idea for contemporaries to see. Put forth what youthful minds might embrace. And let these cherry blossoms fall where they might germinate... See who, and how many might feel the rush, and rise to this occasion. See where these intense young radicals might fly with such glory.
This scenario of which I write, and its ilk are the stuff of which youthful revolutionary enthusiasm is legitimized. Down and out with the old, and in with the new! Rejection dors not cool such embers! Instead there are soon enough flames! And it took but a little nudge for such to become a raging wildfire! Had not the Yamoto been covertly thus inspired, and was it not under construction where eyes could not see! And did it not bear at its proud bow, the Imperial Cherry Blossom!
In Tokyo our obscure teen conceived a road to eternal glory... a self redeeming idea....
How ridiculous such insanity looked to a christian farm boy from Iowa. This Amercian boy was no less inspired than that absurd boy from Tokyo... Who in wisdom or maturity could countenace such insanity?
Hiding behind that hangar at Pearl, his ears, his nose, and his lungs reverberated. And that face he waved at in that diving plane, that goggled face stayed an engraved and haunting image on his mental screen. This was hell happening!
If they had begun with Kamikazes... if they had not waited for the desperation of Okinawa.... what would have been the outcome? Take careful note how I said not "might" but opted for "would". How would that gem of an idea from Tokyo have played out in Pearl?
How many combatants did Japan lose? And yes that number would have been exponentially diminished had Japan struck with human guided missiles from the first? Did I mistakenly write "human guided missiles'? Do birds fly? Did I get your mind over a preconceived mental hurdle....
How does one's mind handle the unimaginable? What part of this rhetorical concept causes you the most discomfort? When one culture's irresistible force cannot begin to grasp the immoveable mind set of another? What scenarios are being brain stormed? And in what cultures, and with how cunning and unimaginable strategies? Just because one or the other cannot imagine it, has nothing to do with its reality and dedicated execution!
These off setting cultural blind spots are the stuff of "win and loss". And what of win and loss withf zero sum outcome? When is it permitted to contaminate what is logical and illogical? Is what really is new, and what really never happened not worthy of detailed examination? When is out of hand rejection rational?
He's older now by decades... a little more than four score. And he knows in his heart how Hideki Tojo was for us fortunately the old (1884). And how what if what was Japan traditional had had the Kamikaze brain storm from the start! And it makes that veteran of Pearl shudder. He sees so clearly without the veil of partisan politics how Japan would have, not might have, won the Pacific...
Being now a lot older and bearing scars between his ears, than four score, he remembers Pearl! And what shakes him to his core is he realizes! His reality is not of the old, but bears the wisdom of rewinding his tape back to 1941. And then he fast forwards to now, but finds few to listen, and none to hear. What he sees makes him tremble! He has no idea what to do, any more than he did on December 7, 1941.
What he fears is even more unimaginable! "They," that nebulous hoard, they are the human guided missiles of today! And we? Our missiles are robotic, but are reigned in and neutralized by collateralized restraint. Which to his mind of 1941 effectively makes such weaponry nearly superfluous. Not for what he sees as his time of here and now. And yes even more comical, and as effective as Flash Gordon!
They Japan, would have won the war! They allowed themselves to be bound to the lost and useless paradigm of samurai and bushido. That emasculated them, and held them captive to the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan!
He thinks to himself... what of today? What is reality in this the time of here and now? What next? What to do? He imagines how he is peering not through a window of his mind. He wonders who walks though the looking glass he sees. Where are those who see the images are again, but not the same! But perfectly reversed. They have the human bombs, and we have the robotic!
He feels an indefinable agitation... "Am I alone in thinking things through like this?" he ponders.
Who are the "they" of today? What if "they" aren't caught in the antiquity like Tojo was, or like Hitler was? What if, as Lincoln said; "It's all about perception" Not what seems to be, but what is! But what do the pollsters claim the people perceive? Is this a new reality?
Were that I were a writer. Is this not the stuff of why and how some of history's greatest moments were blown? When living a humanity watershed changing event, who is talented to see? Having been first labeled as blundering indigestible mistakes, where does leadership take priority? Because a culture up to whenever has not the notion or rationale, or much less the vision to recognize what is taking place, then what? What is the defining factor which sights what are called mistakes?
Learning from what would otherwise never have been learned! Painful? You'd better believe! Beyond comprehension? No excuse! Riddled with catastrophe and mortality? Yet really shifting the slope of humankind's course!
Ask yourself; "Would Japan have won? Even if for now, and to some it looks like a mistake, is it not wise to keep this so called war in the Middle East over there? How do we compensate or redeem the loss of our soldiers in this cause? Is not the human nature in us the only part of humanity unchanged since we walked out of Africa? Is there any way to win without lives being lost? What rules of collateral damage cut only one way?
This is one basis for you to reconsider not only what you think, but how you think.
The looking glass cuts both ways... and yes there is a toll!
Stepping back through the glass, backing away until you see it all. You see how what is happening today is indeed a mirrored image. The human operated kamikazi of today prospers by collateral damage! The robotic guided ordinance takes pride in limiting the same! Nor did the original Kamikazies break away from their divine mission.. they limited their targets to the military only.
What if there were a post IED declaration? What if it were announced that after any IED, in the next 24 hours, in that very same GPS spot, there would be detonated a huge device? What would be the reaction as an acre or two were demolished. Fair warning that there is a new toll to be paid. The area around the IED would carry latency of decimation of surrounding real estate. Might there possibly be some incentive for the locals to suddenly adopt a new and ratting out policy? Might those inclined to wreak the IED damage perhaps meet a different neighborly distaste? The aftermath collateral damage would be limited to real estate never another life taken... blaring warnings followed by time to evacuate, and then!
Why not a synchronous satellite or drone, which would show the perperators, and trace their paths after they had been observed installing their inhumane IED?
