The Associated Press is reporting this morning that the Obama administration has brought the first of what will be many terrorists from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to U.S. soil to stand trial in a civilian court.

For all the blustering since Obama announced his plans to close Gitmo in January about the dangers of forcing these monsters to serve time on U.S. soil, that’s not the real problem. If the 245 Gitmo detainees retained their status as enemy combatants on U.S. soil, that’s fine. But this is a policy shift in more than where the terrorists live out their miserable lives.

The fact that the administration is looking to put them on trial in civilian courts proves the United States has shifted back to a pre-Sept. 11 mindset — back when we considered terrorism a crime and not an act of war.

From the Associated Press:

An official says the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be brought to the United States has arrived in New York.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the case, told The Associated Press that Ahmed Ghailani arrived in the early morning hours Tuesday.

He will be held in U.S. law enforcement custody until his trial in New York City.

Ghailani’s trial will be an important test case for the Obama administration’s plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo and bring some of the suspects to trial.

Ghailani was indicted in 1998 for the al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks which killed more than 224 people.

So blowing up two U.S. embassies and killing 224 people is now, again, a crime.

We can’t ignore the myriad of legal questions that still remain when it comes to exactly what to do with the Gitmo detainees and how to classify their status. But we also can’t ignore the fact that the strategy of treating terrorism as a mere crime failed miserably in the past.

Remember the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole, etc. Our lackluster responses to those attacks did nothing to thwart al-Qaida or its surrogates from continuing their war against the United States.

Civilian trials will expose the CIA’s methods, not just in interrogations, but in intelligence gathering. Giving a defense attorney the ability to try, in open court, the CIA, the U.S. military and other special forces will only expose the methods our country uses to fight terrorism. What’s more, it makes a public spectacle out of them.

If our national mindset goes back to Sept. 10, 2001 and we return to that mindset and strategy, we’re only inviting more attacks. Osama bin Laden himself said that our initial response to the embassy bombings and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole proved to him that the U.S. was weak and open for attack.

The only stance the U.S. should have when it comes to terrorism is one on a war footing. The terrorists don’t mince words or actions — they know they are at war with us. To deny that fact is to admit defeat and invite more disasters — it signals our return to sleep.