Yet another sign that, when it comes to national-security policy, the Obama administration is more interested in changing the labeling rather than the substance of Bush administration policy:

The Obama administration is moving to solidify one of the most significant shifts of resources put into place under President George W. Bush: the transformation of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into agencies where the top priority is counterterrorism rather than conventional law enforcement.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other Justice Department officials have emphasized that they will not cut resources allocated to national security in the foreseeable future, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, told lawmakers on Wednesday that “we have no intention of retreating from preventing a terrorist attack on American soil as our No. 1 priority.”

This is leading to a situation where we are still fighting, but not a “war” — it’s an “overseas contingency operation” now — and our enemies are not “combatants,” but we still have the authority to hold them without criminal charges. It’s all slightly absurd but better this rhetorical sleight-of-hand than a real change of policy that would seriously endanger U.S. security. This is change even hawks can believe in.