This appeared at: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=082206E
It might be worth discussing. If he's right, it will probably reshape national politics in the near term.
So what do you think?
Regards
John
It might be worth discussing. If he's right, it will probably reshape national politics in the near term.
TCS Daily - Sane Mutiny: The Coming Populist Revolt
By Arnold Kling : 22 Aug 2006
"British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny --
refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they
feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150
passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of
Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic."
--The Daily Mail, August 20, 2006
I am not a pollster, but my sense is that there has been a
shift in the popular mood in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and Israel as a result of events this summer in Iran,
Iraq, Lebanon, and London. I suspect that this is one of those
eras where the political elites are out of touch with mass
opinion. In this case, I think that the elites are mostly
wrong, and I hope that they adjust.
Regarding the "mutiny" of the British airplane passengers, no
doubt the elites are thinking, "Oh, what awful behavior on the
part of passengers. They are ruining our effort to reassure
Muslims that they face no discrimination."
Meanwhile, the people are thinking, "Look, the fact that you
subject all passengers to the same humiliating searching and
restrictions says that you have no idea who is dangerous and
who is not. If you are that incompetent, then don't expect us
to trust you when you tell us that a plane is safe."
The elites focused on hair gels and other liquids that were
supposed tools of the plot. Everyone else noticed the
ethnicity of the plotters. As James Joyner put it recently on
TCS, "Keeping passengers from taking nail clippers, toothpaste,
and hair gel with them causes an inconvenience
disproportionate to the infinitesimal gain in safety
provided. Likewise, forcing people to arrive at the airport
three hours early so they may stand in line to have their
shoes checked for explosives is plainly silly.
It makes far more sense to harden targets and screen for
likely terrorists than to treat all citizens as potential
terrorists."
I suspect that the popular frustration is widespread. My guess
is that popular sentiment is turning against elite opinions
like these:
The world's Muslims share our desire for peace and
democracy.
Equal-opportunity passenger screening at airports is a
better policy than profiling.
The United Nations is the world's conscience and
policeman.
The "international community" will deal with Iran's quest
for nuclear weapons.
It is possible for the United States to bring about a
constructive transformation of Middle East politics,
either through diplomatic or military initiatives.
There are other ways in which elites have lost credibility.
President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert are both
guilty of exaggerating the success of military operations.
Excess partisanship in a time of war is very frustrating to
the public. How can it be that essentially all Republican
officials agree with the Bush Administration policies and
procedures for monitoring phone conversations and essentially
all Democrats disagree? Would a Democratic President really be
following policies that are very different?
Finally, anyone who believes that "French co-operation" is
anything but an oxymoron is an incurably senseless elitist.
French peacekeeping forces in Lebanon were decimated without
firing a shot. (Actually, it's worse than that. To be
decimated is to lose ten percent of one's soldiers. France's
expected contribution of 2000 soldiers was reduced by ninety
percent; in addition, the French proceeded to deny that the UN
resolution means what it says when it calls for the disarming
of uniformed militias.)
Elite Theory vs. Popular Reality
One illustration of how elite theory can conflict with popular
perceptions is the cover story on the September issue of The
Atlantic, by James Fallows. The thesis of the article, which
was written before the Lebanon war and the failure of the plot
to blow up British airliners, is that the war on terror is
over, and that we won. Despite the occasional plot or
successful attack, we should declare victory, tone down the
war rhetoric, and go about dealing with the world's trouble
spots using conventional diplomacy. In a follow-up, Fallows
argues that the break-up of the plot to blow up airliners
shows that "it was police work, surveillance, and patient
cultivation of sources that broke the airline bombing ring --
not speeches about a state of war."
A populist definition of victory would mean that governments
that fund terror groups or use them as instruments of their
foreign policy are brought down. A populist definition of
victory might mean that Muslim clerics who urge young men to
join the jihad are given the opportunity to experience the
ecstasy of martyrdom themselves.
Failing to accept James Fallows' nuanced analysis, most people
will not want to declare victory until they can once again
board a plane without taking their shoes off. In fact, one
might argue that we can really declare victory only when you
can board a plane that has several dark-skinned male
passengers speaking Arabic and not think twice about it.
Mobilize Social Scientists?
It is not just journalists who play the elitist game. In the
Armed Forces Journal, retired major general Robert H. Scales
says that in order to win modern war we need to mobilize
social scientists.
"The military of the future must be able to go to war with
enough cultural knowledge to thrive in an alien environment.
Empathy will become a weapon. Soldiers must gain the ability
to move comfortably among alien cultures, to establish trust
and cement relationships that can be exploited in battle...
We are in for decades of psycho-social warfare. We must
begin now to harness the potential of the social sciences in
a manner not dissimilar to the Manhattan Project or the
Apollo Project. Perhaps we will need to assemble an A team
and build social science institutions similar to Los Alamos
or the Kennedy Space Center."
I can hear Donald Rumsfeld saying, "You go to war with the
social scientists you have." I am reminded of a neighborhood
football game when I was in fourth grade, where all the
neighborhood brainy kids were on one team, and the other team
had Gary Bemis, my next-door neighbor who was big and tough.
After Gary scored touchdowns the first five or six times he
carried the ball, the parents declared the game over. My guess
is that social scientists fighting Islamofascists would be
like the brainy kids trying to stop Gary Bemis.
The elitist view is that we need to be more sensitive to other
cultures and we must deal delicately with civilians whose
hearts and minds we need to win over. I think that popular
opinion is swinging toward the opposite conclusion.
Populist Responses
My sense is that popular opinion is likely to gravitate toward
one of two positions.
(1): The Middle East is a hopeless cauldron of hatred. We
should focus on homeland security, stay out of the Middle
East, and have as little interaction with the Muslim world
as possible; or
(2): A major war is inevitable, so that we need to get ready
for it. Nothing else will stop Iranian aggression, and
nothing else will stifle the funding, sponsoring, and
glorification of terrorists.
In 2008, I believe that either a Republican running on (1) as
a platform or a Democrat running on (2) as a platform could
win broad bipartisan support. However, my guess is that the
Democrats are likely to come closer to representing (1) in
2008, and as of now my sense is that (1) is more popular than
(2).
In my own thinking, I tend to vacillate between (1) and (2).
The advantage of (2) is that it helps align our interests with
the UK and Israel, which are not in a position to adopt (1).
The UK, with its larger and more radical Muslim population,
necessarily is affected by international Muslim belligerence.
For Israel, staying out of the Middle East is not an option.
The main prediction from this essay is that we will see an
outbreak of popular frustration in the next few years. I think
that many people are tired of political spin machines,
diplomatic "solutions," and fancy intellectual models of the
world that fail in practice. They long for a leader who talks
straight and who can make the plays work on the field the way
they were designed to work on the chalkboard.
The failures of elitist thinking will create an adverse
environment for haughty, cerebral politicians such as Tony
Blair or Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, I expect more populist
figures to emerge, which gives me considerable misgivings. I
think that populist economics is mostly bad. If voters turn to
populists on the issue of national security, my guess is that
the economy will suffer for it.
But I think that the popular instinct is that the elites so
far have not gotten it right on security and Islamic
militancy. And in that regard, the popular instinct is right.
The author is a TCS Daily Contributing Editor.
So what do you think?
Regards
John
![[rolleyes]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/042.gif "Roll Eyes [rolleyes]")
