I don't think the comparison is valid, if anything it's the opposite; the Pearl Harbor attack was intended as a devastating blow, to crush the American naval capability on the Pacific. The United States then did the opposite of what the Japanese intended, rebuilt the fleet and committed fully to the war.
The thing that brings my attention is the phrase "without any initial relative velocity against the planet". They might not move relative to the planet, but Earth is not an inertial reference frame and is rotating, so bodies in different latitudes would have different speeds in relation to an inertial referential.