What is 'war'?

Bush: "this only serves to remind us....that we are a nation at war"

The 'war' on terror? Here is a question, how can one wage war on a tactic? At the most one could refer to a 'war on Terrorists' but even then that implies that we are utilizing warfare, an enterprise of one state in opposition to another, to combat the terrorists--when most of our actions against terrorists, the brief war in Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan aside, have been comprised of intelligence and police actions.

I realize this is nit-picking and that the term is merely political rhetoric meant to rally people for a cause and to focus the enactors in government towards a clear (and quite worthy) goal--but I do rather prefer accuracy to polemical grandiloquence.