ABSTRACT
Traditional just war theory distinguishes between principles governing the resort to war and those governing its conduct. Assuming the moral equality of combatants, it regards all soldiers as liable to attack; and it categorically prohibits direct assaults on non-combatants and prisoners of war. Civilian immunity is the bedrock of the just war tradition and the linchpin to understanding its inner logic as a coherent moral system. McMahan himself accepts most of these arguments for maintaining the conventional legal requirements, including the protection accorded to all civilians and prisoners. The specific rules protecting non-combatants are not an inadequate legal mechanism for minimizing injustice in war, approximating, but always falling short of, the true requirement to pursue unjust aggressors. The fundamental prohibition on attacking the defenseless is the basis of Henry Shue's original argument against the use of torture, but it has not received the kind of attention it deserves within recent debates about killing in war.
