Opinions from around the country

The government unveiled a new five-colored terrorist warning system last week that they hope will make it easier for citizens and law enforcement to better understand the height of alert the nation is at.

Tom Ridge, director of the White House Office of Homeland Security, revealed the new system that grades the chance of attack on a scale from green to red. The United States is currently on yellow or elevated threat.
The government was hoping that this new system would be easier to understand for local governments and average citizens but we think it hasn’t been much of a change.

Following Sept. 11, the government continued to move the nation to the highest states of alert. Local police officials were sometimes dumbfounded, wondering how they could put their officers at any higher states of alert than they already were at.

Color coding the level of threat is not changing much. If we are on yellow now, what differences will there be if we move up to orange or down to blue? The noticeable differences will be minuscule to the average American.

The biggest problem with the color coding system is that Ridge has not only been vague as to what exactly each color means but he is leaving any response to color changes up to state and local governments.

The Los Angeles city government may react much differently than New York City government and both will react differently than officials in Bozeman, Mont.

What the United States needs to do is be up front and honest with the American people. If there is a viable threat to the safety of American citizens, the government must inform the people of this country as to what exactly the threat is.

Americans are very likely to become immune to the color-coded terrorist warnings. When the government continually heightened the country’s state of alert and nothing happened, many people stopped paying attention.

Americans should not be living in fear but we should not be living completely oblivious to the possibilities of attacks on our country.
We think that government should be more honest with the American people whose interests may be at risk. The current attempts at soothing misinformation will only prove to further hurt the United States.

This editorial comes from the Daily Forty-Niner at California State University at Long Beach. This column was distributed by U-Wire.

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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002