No intention on mixing up with your interesting discussion, but allow me a comment from the pilots side.
As a pilot you do not care about the statistics of the engine system itself, but about the statistics in the specific airframe.
And there a double engine layout has a definite advantage over an single engine layout, in peacetime and when bad guys are starting to shoot at you.
See f.e. the following graphs:
Two-engine aircraft
Single engine aircraft
The J79 was contributing to 60 times more engine related class a mishaps in single engine aircraft (F104) than in dual engine aircraft (F4)
As the engines got more reliable over the years, that advantage got less important, but itīs still there. If you loose one engine, the other one can save the day.