News Analysis
PHUKET: The US Embassy in Thailand has now quietly removed the terrorist warning to tourists in Bangkok from the front page of its online site . . . and perhaps it's better that the misguided alert went with a whimper rather than a bang.
Sad to say, an explosion would have been the only way that the US embassy officials could have proved beyond doubt that the warning was justified.
And if there had been a blast at a tourist precinct in Bangkok, it's fairly certain that people from other countries would have been hurt, along with Americans and Israelis.
Although the two originators of the warning - the Israeli and US Governments - have now stilled their sense of alarm, according to the Bangkok Post at least 14 other countries are still warning their citizens about the danger.
Phuketwan will continue to argue that the current nation-by-nation travel alert/warning/advisory system is a farce.
The main problem it has is that no intelligent traveller believes the doomsayers who see dangers at every corner and trouble just over each horizon.
What the world needs is a system that works, one that accepts the premise that in most natural and man-made disasters, every person is at equal risk, regardless of their nationality.
If we can safeguard the aviation industry for all passengers, regardless of nationality, why can't the same important feat be attempted on the ground?
Americans who took the trouble to register with the US embassy - and I guess those who registered with the Israeli embassy - were also issued warnings via email or sms. That's great.
The general international system for all should be supplemented by a registration system for warnings from individual nations.
There are obviously going to be times when specific nationalities are a target. But the farcical situation that made a mockery of the - no-doubt sincere - efforts of the Americans to warn their citizens will probably have to be repeated time and time again in different corners of the world before commonsense prevails.
And if the boy keeps crying wolf and nothing happens, little wonder that the travellers of the world are no longer listening.
I suppose the arrests of Hezbollah members in Bangkok along with safe houses raided and serious amount of bomb making material seized was also crying wolf, Ed.
This was no joke. Thank a deity that the combined security agencies were onto this like flies on poo and that the baddies were brought in and their weapons seized before we had a Mumbai in Bangkok. Terror warning was well warranted.
Posted by Josh on January 30, 2012 21:19
Editor Comment:
Josh, whether the terror warning was warranted is not proveable one way or another, nor is it the point of this article. The point is whether one nationality can be in danger while citizens of other countries in the same place at the same time are not, which is the foolish conceit of national alerts/warnings/advisories. Somewhere between 14 and 16 countries have yet to lift their alerts, so their citizens are still allegedly at risk. Really? You believe that?