Warnings better than not knowing what hit us

Some people do not like the way other people warn the rest of the people about bad people wanting to harm innocent people. They say the warnings are too alarmist. But a warning is precisely to raise the alarm. A siren will not serve its purpose if it merely whistles, as if at a passing attractive woman. Rumble strips, those series of raised white lines across a road, are precisely intended to give inattentive drivers a jolt, to warn of some danger or need for caution ahead.

A warning must be taken for what it is.A warning. It is given for a reason.And for as long as the reason is valid, there should be no issue as to how it is given, whether as a tight squeeze or a jab in the ribs. The only time a warning is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated is if it is baseless, frivolous or unwarranted, as when making a bomb joke. That is why there is a law that punishes that.

But to warn of a possible threat to a particular activity is no longer baseless, frivolous or unwarranted in these dangerous times, not even in the absence of credible evidence of a specific disruptive plan by anyone. Such an absence of credible evidence of a specific disruptive plan by anyone did not stop the United States from issuing a travel advisory warning its citizens against travel to the south of Cebu.

Almost everybody who knew better was up in arms against the advisory. But who can really say the advisory was baseless, frivolous or unwarranted. Terrorists can strike anytime, almost everytime without the people who were supposed to know knowing. That is what terrorism is all about. To strike when nobody is looking. And the terrorists have for decades now been striking. And here we are, splitting hairs, about warnings?

It is good that there are warnings, that there are people who warn people about bad people intending to harm innocent people. Warnings are not only to raise the alarm, they are also for rude awakenings, in case we have gone complacent and fallen asleep. For there is no sleeping on the job. There is no end to vigilance. The call of the day is to be alert and on the lookout always. Always, as in all the time.

To say that anyone is a potential terrorist is not an exaggeration. It is not an overstatement. All we have to do is look back a few short years to be reminded that the global plot to blow up planes or use them as missiles actually used the Philippines as a laboratory, with Cebu actually being used as a dry run platform. Or have we forgotten how RamziYousef planted a bomb on a plane from Manila to Tokyo, with a Cebu stopover, in 1994.

Yousef, the architect of the first Twin Towers bombing in 1993, boarded the plane in Manila, planted the bomb, and got off in Cebu. The bomb exploded while the plane was enroute to Tokyo. The pilots managed to land the plane safely in Okinawa but a Japanese man was killed in the explosion.Yousef was later arrested and his plan to assassinate the pope when he visited the Philippines was thwarted. No warnings were raised aboutYousef's plan. Only his own bad luck did him in.