In the history of civil aviation the safety of passagers, crew and AC has always been a primary issue. Encapsulating the cockpit has been discussed for a long time and over all this concept was regarded to lessen the saftey of pax and AC and especially the safety of the cockpit crew.
The new aspect after 9/11 is not so much new arguments for AC safety but the nature of the parties which are involved in the discussion. It was Airline Customers, Pilot Unions and Airline Management before; now a new and very powerfull group has its say: "Non flying citizens".
This group is not so much concerned about the safety of the airplanes but about the safety of their towns or the security of the neighbourhood atomic power station. This new participant in the discussion does not mainly see the airplane as something to be protected but as something from which she or he needs to be protected from.
Given the size of the new party, big politcs has no other way but to get involved in the discussion and ecapsulated cockpits seem to enhance the protection of towns from those "guided 500mph 200t Keosin missiles".
As an airline pilot I do not embrace the idea of working in a no contact environment for the rest of my career. But as least in the moment I get the impression that the discussion is fruitless. In all the resent national and international safety and security meetings there was no other concept giving the people on the ground an comparable amount of safer feeling and their opinion has by far the strongest weight.