If the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi & Afghan civilians so far are collateral damage, does that mean....?

...that the 3000 or so people murdered in the Sept 11th 2001 attacks were also collateral damage? After all, I keep hearing from US citizens how civilians get killed in the 'fog of war", yet when it is their own citizens getting killed the attitude changes. Surely if the USA is at war with al-Qaeda then they should expect the same 'collateral damage" as they expect the people of Iraq & Afghanistan to suffer