War on whatever

Andrew C. McCarthy writes that the U.S. has declared war on terrorism.

Can you?

I don't mean in the way Dubya bleats on, beating his hairy chest and rattling his collection of sabres.

I mean, formally declare war on terrorism in a way that is legally binding.

If you cannot, or have not, declared war, you do not have enemy combatants, just criminals.

According to Andrew (a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies) the major drama with treating terrorists as 'mere' criminals is this;

And the judge ignores the most frightening implication of his ruling: We must either release a man planning a massive terrorist attack or give him a trial with all the rights accorded an ordinary criminal, including the right to see the government's evidence. That is, in the midst of a war, with our troops in harm's way, we must surrender to the enemy our intelligence, inevitably compromising the methods and sources for obtaining it.

I don't really know much about the criminal justice system (I'm too busy cursing about the moralising and ridiculous plots to learn anything from Law & Order), so I'm not certain if this is an actual issue or, Andrew is being disingenous to sway the reader.

If he is correct, then I can see the issue.

Still, how do you declare war on a noun?

Update: But how can you declare war on terrorism, when terrorism is just a tactic and not the ideology that it is trying to propagate? The war should be declared against the ideology: the ideology of fundamentalism, fanaticism, extremism, intolerance and bigotry.