Is Al Qaeda a crime syndicate?

Walter Russell Mead opines that the pushback that Obama is getting from some on both the Left and the Right is Obama's fault.  Well, yeah!  He's always tried to have everything both ways.

The President has created some of the confusion in our debate. Frequently during the campaign, sometimes even in office, he has spoken as if he is the head of a criminal investigation team. When it comes to actual decisions, however, he acts like a military leader at war. Greenwald and Paul appear to believe that he is a policeman and needs to start acting more like one; I believe he is a war leader and needs to start talking more like one.

Via Meadia applauds President Obama for killing America’s enemies as fast as he can — and I have no fear that a future US President will use that precedent to send a Hellfire missile through the windows of the stately Mead manor in Queens. I don’t even think American stock market swindlers and tax evaders lounging on the Riviera need to worry about a Predator strike bringing their peaceful retirements to a premature close. Roman Polanski does not need to move to an undisclosed bunker underground. This isn’t a slippery slope; it is war.

Two years ago, the idea that America was in a war might have seemed like one of those anachronistic Bushisms which could be swept underfoot by the New Age of Light and Reason—Guantanamo and military tribunals would have to go as well. With Anwar al-Awlaki dead, the Obama Administration has again demonstrated that it can fight the Lord Voldemort War pretty well; it just can’t quite bring itself to make the case for what it must do.

Which brings up another point. We are not fighting a War on Terror any more (it always was a dreadful term). What is Team Obama calling this kinetic action?