I’m afraid you’ve rather missed the point. My contention is that the traditional distinction between soldier and civilian no longer applies; it did not technically apply in the Cold War, where the very fact of being a civilian made you a military asset and a target, and it does not apply practically now that the same fact of being makes you a target in a way which transcends the technical. We are considered enemy combatants and the effects, as Manchester (and Orlando, and Paris, and Berlin, and Tunisia, and New York, and London) make clear, are now quite tangible.

It is in the eyes of the enemy that we are all soldiers without arms. If you think that an absurd statement then you clearly know little about them.