As opposed to probably a lot more dead both Cardassian and federation citizens a decade later. I dunno like 10-20 billion.
The problem is that the Federation had no way of foreseeing .the Dominion conflict, they had no idea the Dominion even existed at that point, whereas they had every way of foreseeing the outcome of a conflict between the known powers. The colonists in the DMZ would have been the first to die anyway, along with billions on either side. All to prevent having to relocate a relativey small number of colonists, saving their lives in the process. That was the ideal Eddington sought glory for. Millions of people who had no involvement whatsoever having THEIR homes destroyed, THEIR families killed. On both sides. And he did it in order to feel better about himself.
Ultimately the "Maquis crisis" (using your terminology) was only a crisis in that it risked sparking off the very war you are proposing. Had the Federation shared your mindset they wouldn't be a "crisis".
Part of the ideals of the Federation is that their compassion extends to outsiders, even enemy combatants where possible, thus they will avoid conflict based on that alone. That isn't cowardice, they simply aren't inclined to fight if diplomacy is possible. Had the Klingons been in their shoes, doubtless they would have acted much as you suggest, but the Klingons are perpetually in a state of crisis precisely because of that mindset.
I suppose a lot of this comes down to your own personal politics as you say. I'm not an outright pacifist but I do see warfare as ultimately representing a failure of government. The best leaders manage to keep the peace and move the world forward quietly and consciesciously, they make deals, they improve the quality of life for their citizens, they avoid conflict because it's rarely, if ever, genuinely in the people's best interest.
Wars happen when that goes wrong, when people become stubborn and prideful, vainglorious or refuse to back down to maintain face. When people seek their legacy for the history books or become tribal in how they value lives. It seems you and I define "absolutely necessary" differently. I put emphasis on the "absolutely" part, because whilst the outcome of wars are so difficult to predict the one guarantee is suffering.
For me the best leaders are the ones we barely hear of, because nothing overtly world changing happened under their watch. The ones who see the iceberg well ahead of time and steer the ship calmly to evade it in clear waters, rather than pull off an emergency manouevre to scrape by, or some heroics to save the sinking ship. The ones where the public barely have an inkling there was any danger because the risk was managed without incident.
Fighting WWII, for example, becomes necessary from Churchills perspective once in power, of course it was because the ship had already hit the iceberg. Had people paid closer and wiser attention to the economic circumstances post WWI it could readily have been foreseen and mitigated if not avoided outright. That's the role of good foreign policy.
The Europeans made no real extraction from the Middle East and a lot of nobles went bankrupt supporting it.
I never said "The Europeans", I said "The Templars", who did in fact amass incredible wealth and power whilst actually saving very few people (but causing the deaths of many). That wealth was very much part of their later downfall when they were effectively purged by Philip IV who was irredeemably in debt to the financial institutions they built with that wealth. They made a lot of enemies at the time amongst the nobles you refer to who did indeed bankroll the Crusades whilst seeing no return.
