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Imagine that a neighboring state drafts an army of ignorant soldiers, makes them falsely believe that your state poses an imminent threat to their survival or political independence, and then launches them across your border. As a soldier, would you have a right to kill such attackers in self-defense or in defense of your country? In this brief comment, I will focus primarily on the question of whether one may kill "innocent attackers," that is, individuals who pose a lethal threat through no moral fault of their own, but because they are acting under a combination of duress and nonculpable ignorance.

Part of a symposium on David Rodin's War and Self-Defense (New York: Oxford U Press, 2003) argues, contra Rodin, that ordinary soldiers should often be seen as innocent attackers, but there exists a moral right to kill them in individual & national self-defense when they fight an unjust war. It is contended that Rodin's moral fault justification is too narrow & his perspective on the moral responsibility of individuals for becoming soldiers is too demanding to warrant the kind of actions that are deemed morally permissible in war. Rodin's theory on the justification for soldier's rights of self-defense is seen to be a mirror image of Michael Walzer's (1977), despite the former's disagreement with the latter over the subjective innocence of soldiers. The pacifist implications of the moral fault justification can be avoided by adopting an objectively unjust danger justification, whereby soldiers have a moral right to kill subjectively guilty & innocent unjust combatants. Attention turns to the relationship of the right of self-defense to a state's legitimacy or illegitimacy, along with the rights of individuals conscripted by legitimate or illegitimate states. It is asserted that it can be just to kill innocent attackers, thus, it is possible to justify a right of national defense for morally legitimate states. J. Zendejas