> And the whole "protecting civilians" argument doesn't hold water anyway, the ratio of civilian-military casualties keeps going up in the modern era.

This is horridly disingenuous. WWII saw firebombings of major cities, nukes, etc. The ratio of civilian-military casualties is going up because troops are becoming damned near invulnerable to a lot of things they used to die from. The number of civilian casualties has dropped hugely from past conflicts.