Note the plural.

If it were war, there'd be a state to invade and occupy. Ther'd be an indigenous populace to neutralize and pacify. There'd be battles between opposing armies, not one army hunting for random snipers while trying to avoid homemade bombs. Perhaps the biggest proof it's not a war is that if it were, when a belligerent act was committed against Americans by foreign SOLDIERS, they could be killed on the battlefield in self defense, captured and held as POWs or captured and tried for war crimes. Bush was clear from the beginning they aren't POWs, but "enemy combatants" (a phrase whose meaning his administration drastically altered from its already murky one. ) Too bad, really; as soldiers they would've been subject to military tribunals, but the administration wanted a free hand to do with them as they pleased, and thought that would give it to them. The prospect of the White House doing whatever they want to whoever they want on no evidence or even charge is yet another reason for me to insist on due process as firmly as Jefferson and Adams. If they wanted tribunals they should've asked for a declaration of war (and, to be fair, the Democratic Senate never should've authorized The War That Is Not a War, but there was an election in six months so, cowards they are, they did. )

No, Al Qaeda doesn't represent a nation, a region, a populace or even most of even one sect of one religion. It's a bunch of brainwashed murderers led by a wealthy murderer or two who's biggest problem with the Western presence in the Mid-East is we keep getting in their way (though they certainly don't mind us enriching them. ) The particular issues you cite, with which I'm quite familiar, aren't their MOTIVES, but their PRETEXT. Saudi Arabia isn't a secular state, but they're definitely one outside of bin Ladens control, and yes, it pisses him off a lot, and it's symptomatic: Pretty much every country bin Laden would like to dominate from behind the scenes as he did Afghanistan is either 1) an aggressively hostile Shiite state or 2) an American fiefdom. That doesn't elevate him to the democratically elected leader of ANY state. He's a lot closer to Capone than Castro; the latter wanted to rule Chicago like a king and for a while he did, but no one in the US government ever dignified that by acknowledging his legitimacy.

It's simply not a war. Not in name or in fact; we went far out of our way to avoid calling it a war even though that would've DRAMATICALLY expanded the Presidents authority and curtailed much of Congress'. Representing an ideology, even if you're joined in that by a relatively large number of people, does not, in itself, make you a soldier, nor your cause a war. Not in Waco, and not in Pakistan.

I can only refer once again to the Father of American Conservatism in the hopes that the tendency to repudiate all things liberal and embrace all things conservative might do some good for once:

"We find in the rules laid down by the greatest English judges... [that] we are to look upon it as more beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is because it is of more importance to [the] community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished, and many times they happen in such a manner that it is not of much consequence to the public whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, 'It is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject there would be an end to all security whatsoever. " --John Adams, defending the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre

The rule of law rests on the integrity of law, and without that foundation there is only the anarchic law of the jungle.