This morning I got an e-mail from Matt. He wanted to let me know that he didn't like my recent blogging.la post on the terrorist warnings in CA and that he had posted a reply on his own site. It was a very nice e-mail and as I clicked the link I was hoping to read a well thought out argument. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, that isn't what I got. I've read his post several times now and the only thing I can gather is that he's upset that I'm not as afraid as he is. Why he cares? I don't know. But it's very clear that he's scared, he even says so:

Or you could live in fear, (which I admit I sorta do. I am still expecting bad, really bad, terrorism attacks sometime in the near future.

So I have to ask, why? What is he so afraid of? Silly me, he answers that in the next line:

Al Qaeda likes to do a major attack every three years or so. Well I just checked my calender[sic], and it turns out that its been about 3 years since 9/11/2001. Anyways.)

Ah. Ok. If there was anything at all to back that up, it might hold a little weight, but there isn't. Matt provides no link to justify that claim, and I spent about 10 minutes on google and could not find a single article claiming that Al Qaeda runs on three year schedule. In fact, if you look at the Al Qaeda entry on Wikipedia, not only is there no mention of a three year plan, but there's a list of attacks that can be attributed to Al Qaeda and clearly there's no set timeframe. Months apart, years apart, they are all over the place.

What is interesting is that this isn't the first time we've heard this argument. The time frame changes, but how often in 2002 did we hear "the one year anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and Al Qaeda loves to attack on anniversaries." But they didn't. We heard the same thing in 2003, "Two year anniversaries are very important to Al Qaeda." They weren't. And just to cover the bases there's been peppered reports all the way through about how they are planning something for our holidays, for their holidays, for the 9 months 11 days after anniversary, and just about anything else you can come up with. None of which have ever turned out to be true.

I'm not saying they aren't planning attacks, they probably are, I just don't think that A. they have some rigid schedule they are adhering to which justifies us being afraid every month because something is probably right around the corner, or B. that it's worth worrying about at all. If they are going to attack us next week they are going to attack us next week no matter how little I go outside or how closely I size up my cab driver. We have an elected government whose job it is to protect us from this kind of thing, and how they handle things will decide if we reelect them or decide someone else could do the job better.

The thing is that unspecific reports like this do *nothing* but keep people afraid, and actually dull your awareness. Pick up any psychology book and read about fear. It's crying wolf and I'm not going to fall for it.