If you want to incur the ire of our men and women in uniform, just try calling one of their brethren “petulant.” I did that last week in a post on The Corner, and my mailbox has since been smoldering. But the aspersion stands. It was cast at Army Col. James Pohl, the chief military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, where 245 alien enemy combatants are still being held. Col. Pohl made a splash last week by denying President Barack Obama’s request for a four-month adjournment in a military commission case.

Twenty-one Gitmo detainees currently face commissions, which are military trials for war crimes. Obama, whose instincts are all September 10, was hostile throughout the campaign to the Bush administration’s military prosecution paradigm. So far, however, he’s exhibited caution. He’s toned down the rhetoric, conceded that the nation is at war, and even acknowledged that the criminal justice system is not suited to dealing with many people who mean great harm to the United States. Though the president could have pulled the plug on commission trials the moment he assumed office–as many in his antiwar base hoped and expected he would–he hasn’t. Instead, he wants to take four months to study the commissions, which would not disrupt any ongoing trials while giving his national-security team time to obtain the necessary clearances, get up to speed, and carefully consider the available alternatives.

Obama thus instructed his defense secretary, Bush holdover Robert Gates, to have military prosecutors request a four-month adjournment. So reasonable was the request that defense lawyers consented to it and military judges readily granted it–all the military judges, that is, except for Col. Pohl.

Though it has gotten very little attention, Col. Pohl is presiding over the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Nashiri is hardly a household name, but he ought to be. He is, in short, among the very worst offenders ever prosecuted by any United States court, civilian or military.

Before his capture over six years ago, Nashiri was al-Qaeda’s top commander in the Arabian Peninsula. He’d risen through the ranks due to his bombing of the U.S.S. Cole as it docked in Aden, Yemen, on October 12, 2000. Even before formally joining Osama bin Laden’s terror network, Nashiri was an accomplished jihadist who’d fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and sought to smuggle anti-tank missiles into his native Saudi Arabia. In 1998, he arranged a Yemeni passport for one of the bombers of the U.S. embassy in Kenya. (Another bomber killed in the Nairobi attack was Nashiri’s cousin.)

The strike against the Cole, in which 17 American sailors were murdered, was actually Nashiri’s second attempt to sink a U.S. naval vessel. The first, targeting the U.S.S. The Sullivans, was aborted on January 3, 2000, because the terrorists’ dinghy sank under the weight of their explosives. Following the Cole and 9/11, Nashiri continued plotting in Aden. On October 6, 2002, he bombed a French oil tanker, the Limburg, killing a crew member. A few weeks later, he was finally apprehended in the United Arab Emirates. He’s been in American custody since shortly after his capture.

It is extremely important that Nashiri’s case be handled with care. He is a war criminal who should be executed or, at the very least, incarcerated for the rest of his miserable life. Col. Pohl seems to think the case is his stage for scoring a point against his commander-in-chief. Pohl said he found the president’s request for delay “unpersuasive,” and claimed it would harm “the public interest in a speedy trial.” That is pure nonsense. Nashiri was only formally charged in December. He hasn’t even been arraigned yet, much less had the months of pretrial investigation and motion-practice that typically follow that preliminary stage. No public interest would be harmed by a brief continuance.

Pohl gave two other bogus reasons for thumbing his nose–one legal and one practical. On the former, he wrote, “Congress passed the military commissions act, which remains in effect. The Commission is bound by the law as it currently exists, not as it may change in the future.” But the Obama administration and the military prosecutors are not claiming that the Military Commissions Act is bad law. The new administration is engaged in a policy determination, not an attack on the MCA’s legal validity. The adjournment motion was fully consistent with the MCA and the commission manual. Further, this motion was on the consent of Nashiri’s counsel, making it the uncontroversial sort that is routinely granted.

Moving to the practical, Pohl said he was “unaware of how conducting an arraignment would preclude any option by the administration.” That is true but irrelevant–and presumptuous. In essence, Pohl is telling the president of the United States that between the two of them, it is the commander-in-chief (during a war, no less) who should back off so the judge can keep an inconsequential arraignment on schedule.

If every military judge did that, the administration would have to divert attention from the salient question (whether to have commissions at all) in order to manage, case-by-case, which uneventful commission preliminaries could go forward and which critical ones called for suspension. Leaving aside that prudence dictates taking no further action until the future of commissions is settled, such micro-meddling would diminish the commissions’ reputation. There would inevitably be claims that the administration was trying to influence the outcome of the cases. That, undoubtedly, is why other military judges readily granted the adjournment request, which had no bearing on the merits of any individual case.

Ironically, Col. Pohl’s action is certain only to cause what he purports to be against: more delay. If he is not reversed by the appointing authority, which oversees combatant litigation, prosecutors will simply withdraw the charges against Nashiri and refile them later–if Obama decides to keep the commissions. That would just start the case over again from scratch.

Or worse, Obama will discover in Pohl’s grandstanding evidence for his own belief that terrorism cases belong in the civilian justice system, where they were before 9/11. That would be a lamentable outcome. The military commissions have not performed well, but the paradigm of detentions and prosecutions under the laws of war–whether administered by the military or by a new hybrid system with civilian judicial oversight–is essential to our security.

If we go back to a September 10 way of doing things, under which only those who can be convicted under daunting civilian court standards may be detained, we will get September 11 results.