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For me the idea of tyranny and the traps that go with it are what the military should be fighting. To make a war on an idea like "terrorism" or "drugs" is sophistry that has no chance of success. The tenets of the war on drugs was to make them less available, less affordable and less potent. That almost 40 year war has failed on all 3 counts.
What we should be fighting is expressed in your idealistic examples but any war is more complex than that. War affects the neighbors, relatives and all compatriots of the guilty parties. The standard for waging it with the knowledge of innocents that will always be affected should be extremely high. If killing a few hundred saves a few thousand politics will justify it. But the guilt is shifted from the Tyrant for those thousands to the politicians for those hundreds and it becomes murky whether we should then be after the politicians for their murder of innocents. That it's war implies military vs military which it's easy to get behind. If it's tyranny you are trying to dissolve that implies that the compatriots of the villain are not on his side to start so war isn't the answer to begin with. I think there are more subtle answers that may be available.
The idea of fixing things here being a higher priority than fixing things elsewhere is nothing new. Our infrastructure, education, medical affordability, jobs, homelessness, science and many other things are trailing dozens of "lesser"countries while we dump funds into wars we can not win. These things are all non aggressive ventures that are more pertinent to our well being.
I'm not against the military, I just believe it may be being overused. The war on drugs is the most ridiculous money dump in our budgets right now though and it isn't even a military venture, per se. There are millions spent each year to pay out wrongful death suits just in serving warrants to wrong addresses. Military trained personnel getting sent into our homes is a practice listed in our Declaration of Independence as a grievance against king George we would no longer tolerate, but began again with the war on drugs. There's so much more, it's just that the ideals of these decisions aren't followed through in many cases and the outcomes aren't reassessed enough.