I generally prefer more pro-active courses of action. I want to prevent someone from committing evil in the first place rather than clean up the mess after. Things that improve the base quality of life are definitely needed; however, things that help defend it are, also. That's my philosophy.
The Australian Army taught me to be very clever in War and how to use all the senses that god gave me, it is quite easy to create a diversion and distract the Enemy even with very little fire power and weapons, about 6 years ago we played war games with your defence force U.S and beat them with little firepower and a small amount of man power, we drew them from their positions with fake cardboard Tanks that had camouflage netting on them and whatever else fake we could make.
So just because you have a crèche of weapons does not mean they cannot be turned against you!
Just talk to some Vietnam Veterans they will tell you!
You talk about mess, that's all the U.S has done with it's Foreige Policy since 1950's made a huge mess and created their own monsters like the CIA funding both "Sadam Iraq" agaist "Iran" and "you know who from Afganistan" against "Russia" all in the 80's and 90's, all U.S Money making their own problems, I know one thing I wish your new leader the best because he has a huge job ahead to fix all the problems previos U.S administations have made.
Vietnam is another classic "F" up all because someone in the U.S Came up with this Domino theory!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory