Do you really think the America of 1941, which was not by any means the post-Vietnam, pussified metrosexual Obama America of today, would have sued for a quick peace, after the utter outrage of Pearl?
Yes, I will include in my question, a scenario under which the Japs did indeed send most of our carriers to the bottom.
I would assume, and I certainly could be wrong, that we would still have retained enough defense assets to secure the homeland, to rearm and strike back, albeit much later than actual events allowed us.
What do you think?
I remember on Band of Brothers when they interviewed the real-life members of the 101st, they mentioned that guys actually committed suicide because they were rejected by the Army when they tried to sign up.
Much the same as the Vietnamese & Taliban who, never hoping to defeat us, thought/think they could bleed us white.
Sure there are differences between these situations, but the basic idea is the same.
Of course we wouldn't have "sued for peace". But in the scenario that you describe, the allies would have had no offensive power in the Pacific until at earliest spring 1943. There would have been no Coral Sea, no Midway, no Guadalcanal, no successful drive up through the Solomons. The strategic calculus in the Pacific would nave been totally different, and the decision to engage the enemy that much more complex and difficult, which is what the Japanese were counting on.
I'm not saying that they would have won. But they thought they could, and that was enough.