I completely agree with your various points. I suspect that Scorpion_runner, like many who have been introduced to the marathon during the age of paced time-trials, hasn't seen many unpaced marathons with highly competitive fields.
I'm not surprised by the decision to go with pacers in this case. Rupp wants the American record, but almost no one has demonstrated the ability to run under 2:06 on a record-quality course in an unpaced race, and going after the record without pacers would set up Rupp to be taken down by someone like Farah in the absence of a tacit agreement to share pacemaking duties. Still, I'm disappointed, and I think that the decision to use pacers undermines Carey Pinkowski's past statements about the reasons for getting rid of pacers in the first place.