Your points are reasonable, Frank. There's one with which I'd quibble: The idea that it's better to fight the bad guys "over there instead of here". That strategy has an inherent weakness which limits its effectiveness.

It requires us to choose another nation to be the surrogate battlefield. From the perspective of the inhabitants of that nation, we're simply using them as human shields. The inevitable resentment undercuts the tactical advantage by tending to turn the occupied nation's people against us and by giving credence to the enemy's rhetoric. We inevitably end up multiplying the enemies we have to fight.

Suppose, hypothetically, early in the Cold War, before ICBMs, we'd decided to hold a preemptive war against the Soviet Union, in Canada. It's a logical choice, from a certain flinty-eyed perspective, given that the transpolar route is the shortest distance for nuclear-armed bombers. That's why we built the DEWS line. Can you possibly imagine Canadians sitting still for that? Would they for one minute feel that devastating their own land in a wave of nuclear exchanges and counter-exchanges was a reasonable price to pay to spare the United States the same? It's a rhetorical question, of course--I can't think of a quicker way to force Canada into the arms of the Soviet Union.

I think we have to be careful about talking ourselves into such pathologically rational tactics. While the use of human shields has an undeniable logic, aren't there some lines we just can't cross, no matter what?