#self-defense

In most cases when self-defense is discussed, it refers to killing or otherwise harming someone attacking you. Rarely is it applied to situations where people who don't pose a threat are harmed to protect oneself. For example, harvesting someone's kidneys without their consent to save yourself is not self-defense, presuming they have nothing to do with your own kidneys failing. Cops could arrest the family members of criminals to reduce crime rates, but arresting those family members wouldn't be self-defense.

Much is said about Israel's right to defend itself whenever civilian casualties are brought up. And of course the same argument is brought up for other countries whose attacks have high casualty rates. But if we've learned anything from the previous two examples, it's that self-defense only implies the right to kill the person attacking you, not the right to attack anyone at all. So while there might be potential arguments to justify attacks killing noncombatants, I find it hard to buy that self-defense is one of them. If an attack kills five terrorists and five noncombatants, you can argue self-defense to justify killing the terrorists, but not so much the five noncombatants.