After the Bin Laden op, what is the impact? Not on terrorism. Merged thread

[jmm99]

from Carl
If you polled Americans in 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose the results would be the same

Prove it by polls from 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose. Obvious hyperbole.

from Carl
The question has no context so most people will default to "none of my business" unless they've heard of the place or been there.

The question does have context as polls go:

National Survey of 1,000 Adults
Conducted April 22-23, 2011, 2011
By Rasmussen Reports

1* Sometimes, when a country is attacked, the United States provides military assistance to help defend that country. Now, I’m going to read you a short list of countries. For each, please tell me if the United States should offer military assistance to defend that country if it is attacked?

Belgium

Brazil

Bulgaria

Chile

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Peru

Portugal

Thailand

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

Some of the apparent inconsistency in the results may well be due to people not knowing spit about geography. I do buy that as a factor. Moreover, based on many prior polls (Rasmussen and others), what one could call the "foreign policy elite" (CFR, etc.) are much more interventionistic than the flew-over masses.

BTW: what context would you add to the poll question to make it "meaningful" ?

Regards

Mike

[carl]

Exegeration (sic) for effect. The point remains the same. Americans are historically isolationist. I don't have to prove anything, it ain't a courtroom. Merely my opinion which has a historical basis I think.

The question may have context as far as polls go but that is more an indictment of polls than an endorsement of the question. The question has no historical or political context, immediate or long term, without that, it is meaningless.

Perhaps one reason the foreign policy elites are more interventionist is they may follow these things more closely thereby giving them some context to work with right off the bat. (I can't believe you've manuvered (sic) me into a position where I would defend those guys. My life is over.)

Some useful context might be a scenario seeking to simulate multi-year sequence of events that led to our defending South Korea or South Vietnam or intervening in Cuba in 1898 or Kuwait or any number of times a people who have tended to be isolationist, aren't. If you would construct a scenario sort of like that and then let people think about it some rather than saying here is a 50 word hypothetical, you have 10 seconds to answer, then the results might be meaningful. But then your results would be skewed by the details of the question. The whole concept is meaningless.