killing a member of the armed forces of an enemy nation during a war is not considered or described murder

You have to ask why not. Because "war" as an excuse for industrialized murder doesn't go without rhetorical push back. The reason we are forced to accept it as legitimate mostly boils down to the fact that the people doing it have the power to kill us more easily than we have the power to kill them.

It’s a relevant and important distinction

Only if you blandly subscribe to the "They were all Bad Dudes" domestic propaganda that initiated the war to begin with.

This brings us back to the Obama Era of targeted drone bombings.

The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

Alternatively, you can jump back to LBJ/Nixon during the Vietnam War, and their use of Agent Orange and Zippo Raids to conduct genocide in regions of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia where insurgents possibly lived.

But the distinction is purely of political convenience. We don't extend this rhetorical curtosey to Houthi Rebels in Yemen or ISIS insurgents in Iraq and Syria or North Korean mercenaries working alongside Russia in Ukraine or aligned Central African states. We never gave it to the Taliban or the Vietcong or the North Korean Army.

Only the US and it's NATO/Israeli/Pacific Rim allies consistently get the benefit of the doubt when it comes time to count war dead.