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So, every generation can use this as a pretext for striking out at any enemy, real or imagined, on the premise that ‘God told me to do that’?

I suspect not. It was after consulting the Umim and Thummim that Joshua knew what his instructions were and he faithfully carried them out. Unless you’ve found that oracle, we have no basis of any kind for being assured that God has spoken on this or any other issue.

Had our Lord and Savior given such instructions (the most He said was that the disciples should go out and buy swords), then the case would be different. He gave no such instruction, so Christians in particular have no ground to assume they can decide who needs to be attacked and how hard. To be morally upright in war, we must wait until we are put in actual danger of being attacked. Even the possibility that putative enemies are gathering weapons is not sufficient cause. They must use them against us for us to have an iron-clad morally upright stance.

Now, given that the USA is not explicitly a Christian nation, for which the Bible is therefore a founding document, these rules are stricter than the US needs to observe, to the extent that the actions can be made to stick. You may make your own choice about how straitly we should hold our nation to Christian moral principles in a pluriform and contentious world that hardly observes any moral order, much less the great Christian one.