That they're "permitted to happen" as an irrelevant but known and predictable collateral damage to achieving the stated goal (just like civilian deaths in wartime) was exactly my point, I'm not even sure why you rephrased it since it doesn't even sound nicer in your formulation.

No, that's incorrect. The agent causing those deaths is different in the examples you gave. When the U.S. government does not prevent industries polluting and incidentally causing death, it is morally different from the U.S. government sending troops to Afghanistan and incidentally causing civilian death.

The U.S. Armed Forces are a moral agent acting on the direct instructions of the U.S. government. Civilians deaths in Afghanistan caused by U.S. forces, unintentional or not are a direct moral consequence of the U.S. governments decisions.

The fact that people don't have jobs and might die because they don't receive unemployment benefits, or people who die because of industrial pollution that Congress didn't prevent aren't the moral consequences of actions by Congress.

There is a clear moral distinction between consequences of positive actions and those resulting after an omission to act.