In all candor and transparency, a civilian, is generally considered to be a non-combatant in a time of war or terrorism. Typical examples of those that would be classified as a civilian would simply be children, mothers, and all other individuals who are basically conducting their lives in a manner in which they are not combatants in a war or participants in terrorist acts. So then, for the most part, most human beings are by definition, civilians, and therefore the deliberate or wanton targeting of civilians in a time of war or in an act of terrorism, makes such, reprehensible.
Unfortunately, in an age in which terrorists aim to create and make havoc by striking at targets that they are cognizant of as being primarily civilians, because they desire to sow fear into the general public, then it is those civilians that pay the price of such an action. So too, in an age in which aerial bombing is done at unheard of scales and with incredible force and power, even when such bombing are conducted at known military establishments or institutions, there are often going to be peripheral damage to those that are located nearby, including displacement, disease, and death.
While those that live in America, rightly mourn the death of their own civilians that have died in a war, or through terrorist attacks; what seems to be occurring far too often, is that civilians are apparently classified into specific national categories, of which it then follows that American civilians that have died through war or terrorism, are definitely considered to be tragic; whereas the deaths of those that are not American, and in particular, living in countries that America is at war at, are often times, systematically ignored, marginalized, unreported, or valued as a lesser type of civilian death, and thereby never to be placed on the same dedicated level as an American civilian death.
In point of fact, a civilian is a civilian is a civilian. When any nation, does not wish to own up to their responsibility in the death of civilians caused directly by their actions taken in a time of war, then that country is shirking their humanitarian responsibilities. Further to the point, when countries dismiss civilian deaths of all those countries that are not their own, or are not their allies, as basically being unfortunate, and nothing more; then the means to correct the sheer amount of civilians negatively impacted, hurt, injured, or killed is not accorded the proper amount of respect and necessary actions so needed that should be provided.
As it has been said, war is hell, but what makes it even more hellish, is all those that are not combatants to that war, that must unnecessarily suffer, for simply being born into a particular country or by just living in a particular country in which apparently these civilians are considered to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those that are civilians should be treated by any foreign power in a manner, in which, their safety and their livelihood, is accorded the respect that they inherently deserve. To not do so, basically stipulates that we are not born equally, and that we are not all accorded unalienable rights; but rather we are clearly unequal, of which only some are eligible for those unalienable rights, and only those few that have those unalienable rights, are those that we mourn for when their lives are lost through war or terror.