You may notice my reference was to “civil wars.” Would you care to point out an example of another large-scale civil war where the military/civilian death ratio was equal to or lower than that of ours?
Perhaps the American Revolution?
How about the English Civil War?
I think that is good start.
In the 1700’s wars were fought, for the most part, between field armies, and civilian deaths were collateral damage, not really the intent of fighting. The objective was to destroy the opposing military force. THis carried on into the American Civil War. Sherman and Sheridan changed that. There targets were the Civilian Population. Their objective was to destroy the will of the southern population to support the war.
This tradition went on in the Boer War which brought us the first official concentration camps and was expanded in WW1 and WW2.
I think that is the situation, no?