by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

About the author: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a daily newspaper.

President George W. Bush's plan to use military tribunals to try terrorist suspects is founded on three flawed assumptions: that military trials can be fair in the United States even if they aren't fair in other countries; that U.S. military tribunals provide the same kind of legal protections as courts-martial; and that historical precedents justify transplanting 19th century notions of fairness into the 21st century.

The claim that U.S. military tribunals will be fair is too self-serving to be credible. For years, the United States has excoriated dozens of countries—Peru, Russia, China and Sudan among others—for unfair military trials. Mr. Bush argues that our military courts will be different. That borders...