<Nowhere is it inscribed in granite how super-powers must act...

Essentially my point.

There's a lot of talk about what America can and can't do, as if that chunk of granite exists somewhere. As you say, it does not.

I mentioned that the world has changed simply because that fact is seldom recognized by some people. "America can't engage in pre-emptive strikes, because that's not what America does."

Lacking the granite to show otherwise, yes America can engage in pre-emtive action.

As far as scare-mongering, one person's mongering is another's prescience. I work at a financial institution, and our network security guru is a nervous, annoying guy who's always looking for the storm cloud in the silver lining. He sees threats everywhere. We are targeted for cyber-attacks several times each and every day, and not all those attacks are trivial or poorly executed. But no one has ever gotten into our servers, precisely because said guru has taken the attitude that there are competant and determined enemies everywhere.

Our government is taking something of a similar attitude to the nation's security...and it's the only position they could responsibly take.

It's not scare-mongering, Splinx...it's a sensible approach to a world that's far more dangerous than we'd like it to be.