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If the Obama administration wants to demonstrate that it is practical and just to try some terrorism suspects in military tribunals instead of federal courts, it is off to a very poor start.
Justice Department and Pentagon officials have chosen a troubling case for the first trial under the revisions that were adopted to the Military Commissions Act in 2009 — a Toronto-born Guantánamo Bay detainee named Omar Khadr. Mr. Khadr, 23, has been in detention since he was 15, when he allegedly threw a hand grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan that fatally wounded Sgt. First ClassChristopher Speer.
Mr. Khadr was not a mere bystander. He was indoctrinated into armed conflict by his father, a member of Osama bin Laden's circle who was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003. But if his trial goes forward this summer as scheduled, he will be the first person in decades to be tried by a Western nation for war crimes allegedly committed as a child.
