Iraq and Afghanistan

Informing, Alerting, and Warning

In today's Times, an Op-Ed by Philip Bobbitt, author of a forthcoming book entitled "The War on Terror", offers informed and commonsense definitions that should replace the ambiguous color coded alerts during these times of terror threats. Informing means putting out as much nonsensitive information on terrorist threats whenever it becomes available. If the government has general information on a possible threat, it should share this information with the public. Alerting refers to communications with public officials or others that might be directly affected in those cases where the government has concrete information about a threat to specific targets or classes of targets, but does not have information as to when such attacks might occur. Warning means telling both those mentioned under the alerting category and the general public about a threat that officials believe is real and imminent. Ideally, warnings should be coupled with advice or directions as to how the danger might be reduced. This is the only situation where Bobbitt thinks press conferences or other special events should be used as a means of communication.

Bobbitt offers these distinctions in the belief that too often Homeland Security or top political leaders have issued what appeared to be warnings when in fact the information they had should only have been communicated as general information or alerts to responsible parties. He feels that unless the government sticks to such limitations in its communications policy, it will exact a large and unnecessary tax on the economy. Ignoring his categorization will increase the return to terrorist groups of making threats and will eventually lead to a desensitized general public and security services that have been warned too often without the materialization of the threats.