My definition? My definition of innocent Is when someone has no quarrel or bone with a particular situation and also when someone is defenseless and has no beef with someone else or doesn't want to be involved with a certain scenario.
So your meaning of innocence is basically only when x person is attacked when they were not even involved in a crime? So are police guilty of killing a criminal?
Pretty much civilians of a village that is about to be attacked by an unknown invader. The civilians who are trying to protect their kids and children and innocent but the leaf ranking officers who are trying to fend off the attackers are not innocent because they are ninjas for a reason- to fend off the village from unnecessary evil that may plummet. Just because the village officers don't have beef with an enemy does not mean he is innocent once he initiates an attack against the enemy.
Why is the village officer at fault when he his already attacked?
Were the ninja who attacked Orochimaru in part 1 guilty even though Orochimaru invaded their land?
In Sasuke's case, it's quite simple. Sasuke was trying to hide. Zetsu betrayed him and gave out his whereabouts. The Samurai figured out where Sasuke was. Sasuke decided to go out into the open because he knew that there was no use hiding anymore. The Samurai warned Sasuke not to proceed. Sasuke gave them a warning to step back and not attack. The Samurai attacked anyway, which led to Sasuke's killing spree of killing the Samurai. Sasuke is at fault, but the samurai are not innocent in this predicament.
The samurai are not innocent even though Sasuke infiltrated their land?
The point: The Samurai were involved the moment they decided to initiate an attack on Sasuke when they could have been smarter and just notified the kage ninja, but instead they rushed to their death like a bunch of fools. Hell, Sasuke even gave them a warning so that would have been a good opportunity for them to run and notify the kage who could actually cease the threat, but instead they decided to act like they could handle it themselves when in fact they were a bunch of fodders who were cocky and didn't even know the enemies strength.
Same can be said for Sasuke, he didn't have to fight them, but he choose to. Secondly Sasuke should not have been in there in the beginning, he was already wrong.
Why do people keep saying that the samurai are innocent when:
A) They were the ones to initiate the first attack
B) They got involved the moment they attacked Sasuke when he wasn't even looking to fight them
C) They are their to serve and protect against outside danger
Sasuke should have never been there in the beginning.
Sasuke was the one who was trespassing in the beginning, the samurai have right to attack a criminal who is trespassing; especially a criminal who attack one of the family members of the kage.
Serve and protect, doesn't make a person guilty of a crime or remove their innocence of a crime.
And to answer your question, no, the guards are not guilty. The guards decided to protect the president instead of trying to kill person x. That is different if the guards were just trying to kill person x like what the samurai were doing to Sasuke.
If the guards decided to kill the person why is it different? X person is already wrong for attacking the president, which is already a crime.