Previous wars were fought on distant fields against enemies who could not strike back at your homeland. The Japanese got to Pearl Harbor and Midway in WWII but never seriously threatened continental USA. In WWII the number of US mainland deaths was a mere handful, caused by a Japanese balloon bomb that landed harmlessly in a field but exploded when people began screwing with it.

If you can pulverize your enemy at arm's length it's a good strategy to do so. I'll leave it to you to compare with today's reality when the attacker can be a single person with a lightbulb full of something nasty. You may not even get to find out who he/she is let along identify a country to pulverize in revenge.