They can acknowledge it, but not process it into the simple fact that if the best you can possibly hope for in a war is getting the enemy so pissed off that he wipes you out, you are going to lose. No ifs, no buts.You know, that scenario completely negates the whole point of the match up, so they aren't gonna do that...unless you want to say daleks are idiots.
I like the Culture one. It's vaguely tragic that the Culture-debater has to pull out the 'Banks says there's no time travel in this universe' thing. As opposed to the sheer uselessness of most Trek Time travel, or the fact that ST has never gone far back enough to find a Culture they could beat. Never mind that with the Culture's preffered MO, they'd never even know they were being interfered with. And of course, the UFP are going to instantly re-develop phase cloaks in order to have a shitty effort at trying to make an equivalance to the Culture's 'high ground' hyperspace. Comedy gold.