The Obama administration announced last week that it would bring five of the 9/11 terrorists to trial in federal court in New York. The main problem with this decision is that it treats the five as criminals.

Assuming they are the ones that were behind the attacks on 9/11, they are not mere criminals. They are enemies of the United States, maybe not in a strict military sense but in the sense of waging a not-so-secret guerrilla war against the United States from overseas.

One of them is accused of plotting the attack against the Cole when it was berthed in Yemen. Attacking a Navy ship in a foreign port may be a crime, but it surely is also some kind of hostile act.

The same can be said of 9/11 itself. It was the culmination of a long campaign by al-Qaida against U.S. citizens and property, a series of bombings and armed attacks.

With that as the background, the government is making a mistake by affording these people the same due process it gives your average domestic bank robber and stock swindler.

It’s hard to know what the best way to deal with them would be, beyond keeping them as POWs as long as their war lasts. But a civil trial in front of a jury is not it. (hh)