 Moderate traditionalists think we can avoid the realist and pacifist horns of the responsibility dilemma only by conceding a moderate form of Combatant Equality. The argument proceeds in three stages. First, endorse a non-comparative, high threshold of responsibility for liability, such that most noncombatants in most conflicts are not responsible enough to be liable to be killed. This helps explain why killing civilians in war is so hard to justify. Of course, it also entails that many combatants will be innocent too. The second step, then, is to defend the principle of Moral Distinction, according to which killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. This is obviously true if the soldiers are liable and the civilians are not. But the challenge is to show that killing non-liable civilians is worse than killing non-liable soldiers. If we can do that, then the permissibility of intentionally killing non-liable soldiers does not entail that intentionally killing non-liable noncombatants is permissible. Of course, one might still argue that, even if Moral Distinction is true, we should endorse pacifism. But, and this is the third stage, the less seriously wrongful some act is, the lesser the good that must be realised by performing that act, for it to be all things considered permissible. If intentionally killing innocent combatants is not the worst kind of killing one can do, then the good that must be realised for it to be all things considered permissible is less than is the case for, for example, intentionally killing innocent civilians, which philosophers tend to think can be permissible only in a supreme emergency. This could mean that intentionally killing innocent soldiers is permissible even in the ordinary circumstances of war.