The trials in New York City of five men accused in the 9/11 attacks may be unpleasant to contemplate, but they are an inevitable result of the pass-the-buck strategy toward prisoners of the George W. Bush administration starting back in 2001.

The trials now are, in a way, the moral equivalent of someone not getting a flu shot to avoid having his arm stuck, then paying for it down the line by spending a week in bed.

The hundreds of prisoners at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are now what they have been since the commencement of post-9/11 events -- a hard-core test of America's system of justice.

The choice facing the United States each time we captured one more possible participant in events we characterize as terrorist, whether they took place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, some European city or some American airport, was the same. Do we charge them, incarcerate them and put them on trial before an American judge and jury? Or do we cart them off to Cuba -- Cuba, no less -- lock them up, hold them indefinitely, interrogate them under circumstances that would be considered by some to be torture, and then one day -- now, acting on President Barack Obama's promise -- try to figure out what to do with them?

The approach of the Bush administration was to kick the can down the road for two terms. Some of the detainees with easy cases were freed if their home countries were prepared to accept custody. The Bush administration also tried to figure out a way to try some of them in a military-justice system unsuited to deal with such cases. This eventually came to be perceived as a travesty of American justice, with habeas corpus and other protections of rights seen as getting in the way of a "lock them up and throw away the key" approach.

If the Bush administration had freely accepted that some or all of the prisoners taken were prisoners of war, then the problem the Obama administration now faces at least would be shared in some cases by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as opposed to landing squarely on the shoulders of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., with the question even being raised as to whether he has the support of Mr. Obama in his course of action. (A "let him twist in the breeze" approach to this matter would not be acceptable on Mr. Obama's part.)

So the announcement was made Friday that there would be trials in New York, the prime target of the 9/11 attackers. For some reason not yet revealed to the great unwashed of the media or the American people, this story was accompanied by the announcement that White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig would be leaving his post. We are told, incredibly, that there is no relationship between the two developments, but Mr. Obama had charged Mr. Craig with the job of closing Guantanamo within a year of his inauguration and it now looks as if that target will not be achieved.

The story from Washington instead is that Mr. Craig and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel didn't play well together and that Mr. Emanuel, not one of the Obama administration's warmest and friendliest figures, has, in effect, put Mr. Craig's head up on his wall. Mr. Craig may be offered in advance as the scapegoat for whatever problems result from the New York trials of the five bad guys.

For bad guys they almost certainly are. The first major question now is whether the cases against them are strong enough to bring convictions.

Mr. Holder says yes and he will seek the death penalty. Ten eyes for the some 3,000 deaths on 9/11 certainly is what the American public expects. The other question is whether the treatment of the five at Guantanamo will be considered in court as torture, which could damage the cases against them.

That second question raises another nasty problem that the Bush administration bequeathed to the Obama administration. Some of the figures in the "justice" part of the Bush administration spent more of their time trying to justify torture rather than seeing to it that justice was administered according to U.S. constitutional practice. Taking that approach in prisons such as Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and in CIA-administered "black prisons" all around the world, including in ostensibly civilized European countries, has damaged severely whatever good reputation American justice may have racked up across the previous 225 years as a country that operated according to the rule of law.

The trials of the 9/11 Five should go some way toward restoring the reputation of American justice as functioning consistent with our country's principles of human rights. The danger, of course, is that one or more of the accused "walks" -- potentially attributable to the quality of American justice -- which would understandably enrage Americans still rightly furious at the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and the Pennsylvania countryside.

That risk no doubt was taken into consideration by Mr. Obama, Mr. Holder and others in making the decision to put the five on trial in federal court. The security hazards implicit in holding the trials at all, and in New York, presumably have been taken into account, as well, and judged to be worth the candle.

The fact that the candle in question is the very high standard of justice that America has stood for since its founding makes it worth it. We must, however, cross our fingers as this business moves on. It serves nothing at this point to wish we didn't have to face these trials. There is no way to go at this point except forward.

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