ESSAY

By Charles Krauthammer

"Nothing ever gets settled in this town," George Shultz once said of Washington. "The debate never stops." Which is why no one can ever decide which side won. It takes so long for the consequences of a critical policy -- say, welfare -- to become apparent, and the results are so murky, that in the end few can remember who said what, assuming those who said anything are still living.

Not so the Persian Gulf war. Rarely in the life of a nation is a question so vital settled so decisively. The gulf debate is the closest politics gets to a controlled experiment. Hypotheses were advanced, and 43 days later the results were in. In the scientific world, one side admits error at this point. Those who believe in Lamarck or cold fusion either recant or retire.

In politics, however, you just carry on, trusting to the short memory of the audience. Well, maybe not this time. For once, an issue was settled. For once, the vaunted sagacity of Sam Nunn, the angry isolationism of Pat Buchanan, the "street"-smart Arabism of the Middle East experts have been put to the test: an encounter with reality. The results are not pretty, and the tested don't like it.

In January, Democrats solemnly warned that history would closely scrutinize the great gulf debate. Now, barely three months later, they indignantly cry "Foul!" when their antiwar words are recalled to them. How unseemly, they charge, to so manipulate a "vote of conscience."

Vote of conscience? What an odd distribution of congressional consciences we have, when 98% of Republican consciences just happen to fall on the President's side of the argument, and 70% of Democratic consciences on the other. Mathematicians will long be studying this extraordinary exception to the law of random probabilities.

Conscience? If this was a vote of conscience, what are we to make of Congress's other votes? Votes of pocketbook and partisanship? One would expect members of Congress to vote their consciences -- i.e., to decide what is in the best interest of the country -- every time.

And since when has conscience been a defense? It is hard to think of a more genuinely conscientious question for any legislator than abortion. And yet in the election campaign of 1989, the Democratic Party consciously, and successfully, focused savage partisan attacks on antiabortion Republicans.

I have no doubt that Democrats acted in the highest patriotism, seeking the best for their country, when they voted to deny the President war authority. I have no doubt that they voted their deep-seated feelings. But, and this may come as news to Democrats, feelings aren't enough in life. Representatives are elected not for their feelings but for their judgment. And this time the Democrats got it wrong.

But at least the politicians can plead ignorance. What can the experts plead? As New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb points out, in being wrong the Democrats were "joined by probably 90% of American and European experts on Arab affairs." Take, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, perhaps the most prominent of the antiwar advocates. He led the fight against military action because, variously, 1) "One must expect . . . thousands of deaths among American servicemen"; 2) "the price of oil could easily climb to $65 per bbl. or even more"; 3) "the financial costs of the war by themselves" could cause "an economic and financial world crisis"; 4) we risked "an increasing wave of anti-Americanism among the Arab masses"; and 5) "the region as a whole could erupt into flames."

Well, not quite. In fact, the only eruption caused by America's war on Saddam Hussein was a decidedly anti-Saddam eruption by an overwhelming majority of Iraq's own people. The one Arab uprising to follow the war called not for Yankees to go home but for America to march on to Baghdad.

The war and its aftermath have finally exposed the mindless cliches about the Arab world that the experts had propagated so assiduously and that steered them so wrong. These are the cliches of Arab radicalism, proclaiming the ubiquity of Arab hatred of the West, the centrality of the Palestinian issue and the power of Pan-Arabist and Islamic slogans to mobilize the Arab street. Indeed, the Arab street became a cult of its own, built by the experts into a mythic force that the West dare not challenge.

What is the Arab street? The Arab street is a creation of intellectuals who want the West to believe that the radical agenda is the Arab agenda and the West must bend to it. In fact, in the Arab world, public opinion -- the street -- is tightly controlled by regimes with busy secret-police networks and a monopoly on information. The street is largely an echo of the palace.

What is heard on the street? Envy in Algiers, gratitude in Riyadh, rage in Amman. Which is the authentic Arab voice? The question itself is nonsensical. There is no single Arab voice, no Arab street. One would think that such an idea might have occurred to experts contemplating a war that found tens of thousands of Arab soldiers arrayed against one another.

It is true, of course, that the President has committed serious blunders in the aftermath of the war. But that is a blot on Bush; it does nothing to absolve those who got it wrong on Kuwait, who would have consigned its people to the fate now befalling the Kurds. Has one expert admitted error? Not that I have heard. The other night, I listened to one scholar, who had been 180 degrees wrong on the war, blithely advising a Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee on how to handle postwar Iraq.

Gentlemen, Ladies: No one is asking you to resign your tenured chairs. But would you consider a moment of silence? A decent interval for reflection and re-examination? How about a month in a monastery? Not to worry: MacNeil-Lehrer will always have you back.