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I did something similar in college. The propaganda in WWII was far from being PC. It was jingoistic, racist, and promoted hatred of the enemy. If you believe the survival of the nation is at stake, you must demonize the enemy and be merciless in advocating their defeat and destruction.

I got a kick out the Rep debate when the subject of civilian casualties came up and the "horror" of killing the Islamists' families. We have reached a point in this country where people believe we can fight "humane and antiseptic" wars where only the bad guys get killed.

We had no such compunctions in WWII. Aside from the atomic bombs, the fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. killed far more than the atomic bombs. We could have cared less if civilians were killed. In fact, it was really one of the objectives to break the will of the enemy. In the long run, such strategies save lives, both ours and the enemy.

We had no such compunctions in WWII. Aside from the atomic bombs, the fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. killed far more than the atomic bombs.

True, but let me say this about that being from the Air Force...

The bombing we did in WWII was terribly inaccurate. We missed most of the time. And with 10 men crewing a B-17, and 8 on a B-24, we lost tens of thousands of good men over the war with not enough good results. Carpet bombing, fire bombing and all was done not because we didn't care about the civilian casualties, but because only such a aerial bombardment will destroy the target.

Over the years we have gotten better and better hitting the intended target, and especially thanks to modern computing and electronics. It costs a lot of money, but it is better than losing 1,000 men on one bombing mission, just to find out your enemy shrugged off any loses and was back in production the next day.

CEP stands for circular error of precision--means by how close you were (really, how much you missed by).

By the Gulf war our smart bombs--one bomb from one aircraft, had a CEP of 30 feet. Still, many of our bombs were plain old gravity "dumb" bombs. Now, in 2015, only a few are. I don't have accuracy info for those--it's classified, but let's assume better than the Gulf War.

So, to that end, I don't mind us being careful with collateral damage and civilian deaths, because generally speaking, when you've killed a lot of civilians it means you missed the target--unless the target purposefully surrounded itself with civilians. Then it's "Oh well, sucks to be you!"