“Sheikh Osama [bin Laden] warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed…," said Abdulla Ahmed Ali in a martyrdom video shown at his British trial earlier this year.

 

Americans can thank Ali and seven friends that airport screeners steal oceans of lotions from us. The British government claims that in the summer of 2006, these men hoped to smuggle explosive elixirs aboard transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow. They’d detonate the liquids mid-flight to inflict "a civilian death toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale," as prosecutor Peter Wright put it.

 

But British police arrested these Al Qaeda operatives and foiled their scheme in the nick of time. Passengers woke the next morning to find that they could no longer carry liquids or gels aboard planes.

 

The plot as alleged was the stuff of nightmares. And apparently just as unreal: the jury convicted none of the eight defendants as terrorists when it returned its verdict last week. It exonerated one suspect, reached no conclusion on four others, and convicted the last three of a lesser charge, conspiracy to murder. (The Crown plans to re-try the latter seven.) London’s Times says this shows that jurors were “not convinced of the existence of a plan to attack aircraft in mid-flight.”

 

And no wonder. Holes as big as a 747 riddled the case from the start.

 

Under pressure from the Bush Administration, British authorities originally arrested 25 people in August 2006. Among them were a new mother, a 17-year-old boy, and another who was half-deaf. Most of these native Britons were so obviously innocent the government quickly released them. And it has yet to prove that the remaining suspects had any connection to Al Qaeda.

 

The plot itself was improbable enough to keep chemists worldwide laughing. According to the government, the accused would conceal the components of the explosive TATP in bottles of Lucozade, the UK’s version of Gatorade. They would then mix the liquids aboard their flights to blow everyone sky-high.

 

Governments on both sides of the Atlantic and their friends in the media constantly imply that bad guys can whip liquid bombs up anywhere, in phone booths, restrooms, and especially on planes. But producing such a combustive cocktail is a complicated and delicate operation. For starters, the ingredients are exotic: they’re tough to buy and even harder to manufacture in a makeshift terrorist lab. Once assembled, they must be mixed under very precise circumstances with specialized equipment: minimal requirements include freezing temperatures and an exhaust fan for fumes. Plenty of fresh, frigid air is available on a plane's wings, but short of that, the conditions necessary for concocting TATP are exceedingly rare at 30,000 feet.

 

The prosecution’s most damning evidence may have been the suicidal statements six of the accused had taped. But the suspects maintained that these clips were fabricated for their upcoming documentary on British and American abuses in Arabic nations.

 

That film would probably have conveyed the message of countless martyrdom videos: “Leave us alone, go home, get out of our countries.” And yes, “Sheikh Osama” has frequently dispensed identical advice. For example, he announced in October 2004 that – surprise! – Moslem nations strike back when attacked: "Any state that does not mess with our security has naturally guaranteed its own security."

 

Echoing that are imams from Walthamstow, the community where most of the suspects lived. “During the trial,” the Waltham Forest Council of Mosques said after the jury announced its verdict, “the men stated they acted to ‘create awareness of unjust foreign policy’. We condemn their actions but it is counterproductive to deny foreign policy played a part in the radicalisation of these young men. …we are working to counter the extremist views within our community but the government must acknowledge that the actions it supports in foreign countries is [sic] the main fuel these violent extremist use to drive their campaign.”

 

Ironically, when bin Laden and other Moslems order us to quit trespassing, they honor the United States Constitution far more than do most American politicians. Nowhere does the highest law of the land empower the Federal government to meddle in other countries’ business, whether to “spread democracy” or “liberate” folks it deems oppressed or even to help American oil companies extract black gold for copper pennies.

 

Pundits sneer at the “isolationism” George Washington counseled in his Farewell Address (“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is … to have with them as little political connection as possible…”). But had we heeded it, the nearly 3000 Americans killed seven years ago this month might be alive today. And we’d still be toting water bottles and hand sanitizer with us aboard planes.

 

Britons may do so again, and soon. With the liquid-bomb plot resoundingly discredited, theTimes reports that Virgin Atlantic Airways is already “call[ing] for a review of continuing security restrictions on carrying liquids in hand luggage.”

 

But America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is unlikely to be as reasonable. Despite six years of groping passengers and rifling their bags at checkpoints, the agency hasn’t discovered a single terrorist. Meanwhile, its screeners routinely, overwhelmingly fail tests of their competence. And its silly rules have made it a national joke. But swiping Listerine and lip-gloss convinces many Americans that terrorists lurk under every tray table and that we need this $6-billion-per-year boondoggle of a bureaucracy to protect us.

 

Wouldn’t it be easier (and much more in keeping with our Constitution) to heed Moslem pleas that we leave them in peace?

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