The terrorists may have woken a sleeping giant but this situation is completely different to Pearl Harbour and 1941. A war had already been raging for 2 years prior to it and in any event the enemy was identifiable.
Global terrorism is an insidious enemy which exists in the shadows and strikes when least expected. As for the Taleban fighters, they will be no pushover. It is their home territory and they are hardy resilient people who will not be scared of dying for their cause. I am more than a little concerned that the Americans are underestimating the problem. Flattening Afghanistan will not eradicate the problem - it will probably intensify it. History has shown that Islam has always been a militant religion, engendering more loyalty towards the faith than the nation of birth. That alone raises some worrying and difficult questions in these testing times. That said I have a lot of sympathy for the majority of the dispossessed Palestinian people.