Judge John Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Monday on the Obama administration's ability to conduct "targeted killings" in the case of radical Muslim cleric and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi [news archive].

The Obama administration, fresh off a victory in persuading federal judges to dismiss a torture case for fear of revealing state secrets, is divided over using similar tactics to try to block a lawsuit over government efforts to kill an American citizen accused of ties to Al Qaeda.

Nine years into what the US used to call the "global war on terror," the nation still cannot agree on how to describe the struggle, how to characterise it, or on a logically consistent set of tools and procedures to conduct it. To some, this might seem unacceptable. I, however, would be far more critical if I did not harbor some degree of ambivalence myself.