” It’s close to a miracle they even made it all the way across the ocean, we should be congratulating them and offering them a blue participation ribbon or something !”
Every military disaster in history starts with overconfidence, and under-estimating the enemy.
Overconfidence and underestimating is different from obtaining a relatively accurate assessment.
Russia can’t even put her only carrier in the water. It is reasonable to not expect them to launch aircraft on a raid on Pearl Harbor or the west coast. It is factual that they cannot do that.