On questions of national security, U.S. Rep. Chris Carney speaks with the authority of being an expert on military intelligence and (as he noted) “the only member of Congress to have interrogated detainess at Guantanamo Bay.”

However, he is wrong when he argues that terrorists, such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ought to be tried before a military tribunal rather than in the traditional court system. Casting terrorists as enemy combatants serves a political purpose by reinforcing the notion that our nation is at war. However, terrorists who claim they are at war with our nation are not enemy combatants, they are nothing more than criminals.

The original New York City terror bombers were subjected to trials in federal court. Three of them remain incarcerated in a federal prison in Colorado. Zacarias Moussaoui was tried in federal court too. He abides in the same Colorado prison. Carney notes that a military tribunal would provide a fair hearing while limiting the perceived security threat that would be created by holding a terrorism trial on U.S. soil.

The government has already backed down from an initial plan to hold the terror trial in the very shadow of Ground Zero in New York.

One proposed alternative called for moving the trial to western Pennsylvania. That plan spurred immediate negative reactions from Governor Ed Rendell and other statewide political figures, including some who worried that hosting a trial would put the Commonwealth at risk as a terrorist target.

Those concerns may have merit, but they could be a required cost of life in an insecure world.

There are other challenges. Prosecuting terrorists is complex, difficult and expensive.

Heaven forbid, prosecutors may not be able to prove the guilt of the defendants if required to follow the rules required by our legal system.

That would be a problem, but it is hardly justification to jettison the justice system that has been used successfully to prosecute some of the world’s most notorious and dangerous criminals.

The 9/11 attacks cost 3,000 lives. Justice demands that those responsible stand trial before the eyes of the world.

The trial is not for the defendants. It is for those killed, their families and the rest of us who suddently realized that America is vulnerable to attacks by demented radicals bent on punishing society for not sharing their world view.