I know what you mean. But you leave out a few points:
1) To counter it, you have to assume beforehand, that it will be played. Just like Kambi
2) When you counter it, you of course lose something. In my example, you might restore the 12 str, but you lose whatever card you used to restore it (most likely a card planned to be used as -I'm not sure about the correct term, I hope you understand it anyway- tall removal)
As I said before somewhere, I'm not a Kambi fanboy. I tested it, and saw that it's not worth it (which, btw, also is a factor to consider in this debate). I even had it in one of my decks and forgot about it, because it appears very rarely on hand. When I saw it, it was an immediate mulligan.
But besides my personal view of Kambi, I just can't follow the thought of Kambi as an almost almighty card, just because it has the potential to cut your round 1 turn short.
Is it a bad card in terms of balanced gameplay? Yes.
Is it worse than some other powerful cards? No.
So, in my view, either all cards that manipulate cards on the opponent's hand should be removed from the game (or nerfed), or none. Just picking one is too biased.