Khachigian: There He Goes Again

* Kenneth Khachigian’s Sept. 26 column tells of the political roots he shares with Pat Buchanan.

Though the two may disagree on whether there is much difference between Democrats and Republicans, they are kindred spirits when it comes to understanding history. While Buchanan thinks the Nazis were not such bad guys, Khachigian writes of the freedom-fighting Contras.

The received history from people like Khachigian is that the Sandinistas were evil communists who forcibly overtook Nicaragua, which had its savior in the democratic-minded, freedom-loving Contras. That scenario is also wrong.

The Sandinistas, whatever we may think of their policies in office, were elected democratically, and the Contras were unable to elicit significant political support within Nicaragua even with declining Sandinista popularity.

Those freedom fighters were in fact trying to overturn the results of popular elections in a country in which they had a limited constituency.

Khachigian’s beloved freedom fighters were nothing of the sort. The Contras were not people fed up with an evil communist regime who took up arms to fight it. The Contras were a recycled version of the Nicaraguan National Guard, which served as an instrument of brutality in the 1970s for strongman Anastasio Somoza.

Khachigian can go after Democrats all he wants; they are not much better than the Republicans that he supports. However, he should be careful with history.

Facts are facts, no matter which fascists, Contras or Nazis we discuss. Khachigian should be a bit more careful in his rhetoric.

GARY MARTS

Irvine

* This is rich! Khachigian writes that Buchanan is mistaken in his consideration of leaving the GOP.

Khachigian pleads for Buchanan to stay in the party, for it represents such distinctive alternatives to us damnable Democrats.

But in all his rhetorical demagoguery, Khachigian seems to have avoided the elephant in the party’s china shop: Buchanan’s departure would repeat the history of 1992 and 1996 and split the Republican conservative vote.

JEFF MARKS

Costa Mesa

* It is hard to believe that anyone would take Ken Khachigian seriously enough to bother responding to his column.

He’s a joke (right?) played on us readers in order to generate letters.

Perhaps if we refuse to get sucked in and refrain from responding to his from-another-planet opinions, The Times will eventually replace him with rational commentators from all sides of the political spectrum who live on the planet Earth.

MARGARET BURKE

San Clemente

* As a registered Republican, I read Khachigian from time to time because he has a good writing style and he often has some interesting things to say. Sadly, the Sept. 26 column was overkill.

We Republicans are getting a reputation for rigid partisanship and a confrontational if not combative attitude toward most issues.

Does Khachigian really believe the “mainstream of the Democratic Party relishes raising taxes, better to grow the government. . . .”? How archaic and nonsensical.

With regard to the National Endowment for the Arts, most of the major countries of the world take pride in their art. Do we Americans really want to look like a bunch of Neanderthals, with “country music” being the extent of our contribution to world art?

And finally, “would Ronald Reagan have offered clemency to political terrorists?” Probably not, but did he have the intelligence to understand the issue and its subtleties, or was he dozing when the question was raised?

In terms of “terrorists,” Reagan did double-talk himself out of the Iran-Contra debacle.

This demonizing of all things Democratic and the glorifying of everything Republican are strategies which undermine some of the Republicans’ credibility when the Republicans have some good ideas to share with the American public.

I wish people like Khachigian had the conceptual ability to perceive subtleties and to understand that many of these issues are very complicated and cannot be clearly understood or improved with simplistic slogans and dichotomous thinking.

I believe that much larger differences exist between the far right and far left than between mainstream, clear-thinking Republicans and Democrats.

LOUIS REGAL

Huntington Beach