MISSED CLUES

by David Nuttle

Over the years, our U. S. civilian & military leaders have missed clues of several impending disasters. On 07 Dec 1941, 183 Japanese Zero fighters, with bombs and torpedoes, used a surprise attack on much of the U. S. Pacific naval fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In a matter of hours several of our battleships were sunk and 2,403 of our sailors killed. The U. S. had stopped supplying Japan with oil and scrap metal the Japanese needed to support their expansion of Empire that started with a war on China and capture of French Indochina.

There were clues the Japanese would attack in retaliation to U. S. damage to their causes of conquest. Moreover, the Zeros had to be transported within striking distance by six aircraft

carriers of the Japanese Navy. Such an attack should have been anticipated, and so many of our ships should not have been at anchor in one harbor.

Prior to the horrific attacks of 9/11, we ignored multiple reports of the fact that foreign nationals who were known Islamic Wahhabi were receiving training as commercial pilots here in the U. S. There should have been questions asked as to why so many probable jihadists needed to learn to fly commercial aircraft. The answer came when these jihadists, all but one a Wahhabi, took control of four commercial aircraft and used them to kill nearly 3,000 Americans and destroy the Twin Towers in New York City, severely damage the Pentagon, and cause the crash of an aircraft killing passengers and crew.

On a Special Operation to recue Americans captured and held in Tehran, the rescue teams had to get to Tehran, Iran by flying in helicopters over a long stretch of desert with frequent sandstorms. No sand screens were placed in the helicopter engine air intakes. A sandstorm hit the choppers on this flight and the engines stopped operating when sand forced the engines to become clogged. Planners of this mission failed to consider a sand- storm as a risk to the mission and they should have had a clue.

During the Vietnam War, our military "brass" should have had a clue that artillery and aerial bombing would offer little advantage against communist forces operating from large numbers of underground bunkers. In the early stages of that war our military commanders failed to provide jungle warfare and unconventional warfare training for our troops. They should have had a clue that our troops would not do well against communist forces very long experienced in jungle warfare and skilled in countering conventional warfare tactics. These same U. S. military commanders decided the jungle was the enemy and acted to kill the jungle by spraying it with Agent Orange. They did not have a clue that the jungle was totally neutral and killing the jungle was not a tactical benefit. The result of this spraying was great environmental harm, killing of wildlife, and causing horrific health problems for our troops and local populations from the very toxic chemical, dioxin, in Agent Orange.

In Afghanistan, we had no clue about what was needed for nation building for a tribal society typically ruled by regional War Lords. Moreover, we had no clue that Afghan males would risk little to fight Taliban terrorists when these males had little to suffer if the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan. As known to most, the Taliban seized control mostly due to the fact that the Afghan Army, of Afghan males, did not provide effective armed resistance. Kurds in Iraq created all female military units and the Kurd women quickly defeated attacking Islamic jihadists because jihadists believed that they would not go to Islamic Heaven if killed by a woman. If our military leaders had a clue they might have contracted with the Kurd female forces to create an all-female Afghan Army that would have been highly motivated to defeat the Taliban due to Taliban's many abuses of Afghan females.

The POTUS G. Bush administration said there were clues that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction they were about to use, but those clues were never confirmed. Hussain was known to be assembling all the inputs needed to create nuclear weapons, but those specific resources were destroyed in an aerial attack by Israel. Despite the fact that no then current cause was justified, the U. S. attacked Iraq and destroyed the Iraqi Army that had long been keeping Iran from expanding its acts of expansion and terrorism. Clues do need to be fully validated before they are acted upon.

Our command structure needs to be upgraded to create an effective system for evaluating the "stream" of clues typically available prior to a disaster or decision causing great harm.