Combatants, Non-Combatants, and the Question of Innocence

Chapter 4 tackles issues surrounding the concept of combatant/non-combatant and the related notions of guilt/innocence, and the connection of these to the soldier/civilian distinction. The investigation is partly conceptual, but it also inevitably raises moral questions and their significance, since the tactical definition’s reliance upon such concepts relates immediately to the moral assessments enshrined in the just war principle of discrimination, which prohibits the direction of lethal violence at non-combatants and reflects a wider moral principle that prohibits violence against the innocent. Whether one or both of these principles should be rejected, modified, or allow of exceptions are further questions addressed in Chapters 5 and 6. The present chapter requires extended discussion of contemporary debates within the complex just war tradition, particularly between those loosely styled “traditionalist” and “revisionist.” It offers a judgment on the debate and discusses its relation to the author’s account of the nature of terrorist acts.