I don't think Americans deliberately target civilians in order to induce terror in the enemy. I don't doubt that innocent civilians often die as the result of our military activities, and we certainly make mistakes, and we do have individual rogue soldiers, or even commanders, who may commit brutal war crimes. But the deliberate targeting of civilians as a matter of policy, just to demoralize an otherwise harmless and defenseless enemy population hasn't happened since the bombing of Dresden.

Yes, I know that we nuked two Japanese cities, and killed many more civilians than that during the firebombing of Tokyo, but these were actions designed to break the Japanese spirit and end the war, and to demonstrate that further resistance was futile.
By bringing the war to an earlier end, lives on both sides were probably saved. I realize others may disagree with that assessment, and I may even be wrong in my logic, but if I had been in Truman's place when he ordered those actions I would have done the same thing.

In our current wars, we have been known to attack venues where we know (or sincerely believe)enemy combatants are present, even though we realize innocent civilians may also be present (such as weddings). But terrorists deliberately target innocent civilians at targets that have no military value, precisely because there are civilians present. Its not an accident, and its not collateral damage. It is deliberate. They have no military objectives, they simply want to humiliate us because we don't believe in their ridiculous religion. There are Americans that do think this way, like the creeps that bomb abortion clinics and federal office buildings, but I'm not one of them.

I would not put an end to ISIS by carpet-bombing Raqqa. Besides the 50,000 or so ISIS and their supporters that live there, there are also about a million other people, most of them victims and slaves of ISIS. That is too high a price to pay. But like the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, under certain circumstances I could see myself giving the order.

If ISIS were getting bigger and stronger, and if nothing else could stop them, and if I were assured that Dresden-bombing the city would do the job, then yes, I would do it. But unlike Messrs Trump and Cruz, I would not boast about it, I would not look forward to it, I would not use it as an talking point to fire up my bloodthirsty followers, and I would be thoroughly ashamed for the rest of my life if I did.

I realize terrible things are done in war, and sometimes by good people for good reasons; like torture. And sometimes, we learn later that they may not have been necessary. I cannot say I would not do those things, to save the lives of my comrades. But I despise people who go into a conflict preparing, even looking forward, to doing these things, proudly and arrogantly, and usually from behind a comfortable desk in an air-conditioned office.