On the other hand, we (and our present and potential enemies) have weapons which can target whole societies as such, with ghastly consequences which would be both geographically and intergenerationally indiscriminate (I'm thinking, for instance, of genotoxins.)
I suspect we are more likely to use the former, and jihadi nihilists more likely to use the latter. This is because our aims are different: our aim (I hope) is to stop aggressors and render them unable to carry out further aggression. Their aim is to either totally dominate, or totally destroy the "infidels," even if it involves their own certain death (which they would regard as glorious.)
There had better be a distinction between their strategic aims, and ours. If there were not, it would make little difference which side won.
And BTW, Sherman was, beyond debate, a man who used the crushing of helpless American civilians as an instrument of state policy. Lincoln should have sacked him --- or hung him.
Lincoln put him up to it and approved of everything he did.
Had Sherman Not marched through Georgia and the Carolinas, the war could have gone on until 1867 or 68. And that war being the type of war it was, how many more hundreds of thousands of young men on both sides might have died had the war been prolonged? Or worse, what if the administration following Lincoln’s had decided they’d had enough and made peace with the Confederacy, thereby creating two nations instead of the one strong one that came out of the Civil War poised to grow into the most powerful nation the world had ever seen?
“In war, there’s no substitute for absolute victory.”
-Douglas Mac Arthur