Contra Conniption

RONALD REAGAN ISN'T the first President to have it in for a particular Central American regime.

Back in the days before World War I, Woodrow Wilson decided he had it up to here with a bunch of goons who seized power in Mexico. Much as in Nicaragua, a broad-based revolution toppled the government of an aging, long-ruling dictator, but its democratic elements could not maintain power and were soon pushed out by extremists. While the revolution in Nicaragua was pushed to the left, though, the revolution in Mexico was coopted by elements on the extreme right.

Next week as the House of Representatives again considers the current Aged Incumbent's request to give $100 million to forces trying to topple a regime he cannot stand, lawmakers would do well to contemplate the lessons of President Wilson's attempt to overthrow a government he personally despised.

The Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua--a "cancer that has to be excised" and "an outlaw regime" to Reagan--and the reactionary militarist regime of General Victoriano Huerta in Mexico--a "government of butchers" to Wilson--represented to both presidents, respectively, ideologies they spent their lives opposing.

When the subject of what to do with the Sandinistas is discussed, Time magazine reports, "the normally amiable and relaxed President sits up straight in his chair; his eyes flash, his lips tighten and his hands ball up into fists." Like Wilson, Reagan views the presence of such a regime as a personal affront and has taken it upon himself to see it removed.

But such personal indignation clouded Wilson's better judgment and led him to a misguided and ultimately unsuccessful policy. It can only do the same to Reagan.

Wilson's intense desire to see General Huerta removed obviously led him to search for a suitable replacement. The most promising candidate he could find was one Venustiano Carranza and his band of "Constitutionalists." But they were consitutionalists in name only, as a clever ploy to appeal to Wilson. When they eventually gained power, they threw their democratic pretensions out the window and left Wilson with a regime even more despotic than the one he had seen overthrown.

A similar fixation has led Reagan to embrace the Contras, a fledgling troup of former Somocista national guardsmen. Much as Wilson hung around with bad company because of his personal grudge with the Huertistas--at one point he even supported Pancho Villa--so Reagan's disgust with the Sandinistas has fogged his presumed better judgment and led to his cozy embrace of a contra-band of ex-Somoza thugs.

BUT WHAT THE two Presidents share most is their hubris in presuming to dictate the internal workings of another nation. Wilson said upon taking office that his administration "would have no sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambition." He believed that, "when properly directed, there is no people not fitted for self-government," and took it upon himself to "teach the South Americans to elect good men."

Such sentiments were noble in intention, if condescending in conception. But Wilson's gravest mistake was in his determination of how to "properly direct" the Mexicans. His policy of supporting an armed resistance to a nearby regime he disliked was not only politically illegitimate and morally questionable, it was also counter-productive. As one historian wrote, "Wilson's assumptions about how to effect change in Latin nations [were] greatly flawed; he especially underestimated the vigor and resistance to external guidance of revolutionary nationalism."

Reagan is making the same mistakes today in Nicaragua. He is enabling a faltering, repressive Sandinista regime to maintain its hold on the people by allowing it to wrap itself in the Nicaraguan flag as a band of Yankee-supported brigands invade its turf.

The contra-versy raging in the U.S. today is not--as Pat Buchanan would have us believe--one that pits those willing to tolerate a totalitarian regime against those who will not. We tolerate them all the time and will continue to do so long after the curtain is drawn one way or another on the present Nicaraguan imbroglio.

When Reagan refers to Nicaragua as "a second Cuba," he unknowingly highlights his own acceptance of one such regime. He surely has no plans to topple "the first Cuba." Nicaragua is just an easier target on which he can vent his anti-communist spleen. And, of course, if Nicaragua were half the threat to American security that Reagan makes it out to be, his failure to intervence there long ago would be grounds for impeachment.

RATHER THAN ARGUE who is less tolerant of totalitarianism, Congress and the Administration should really debate whether it's right for the U.S. to bully weak regimes it does not especially like.

Wilson's animosity toward the Huertistas led him to seek any pretext for an American intervention in Mexican affairs. He then manipulated an incident in which American naval officers were erroneously arrested--and quickly released--by apologetic Huertista forces to garner Congressional and public support for his policy. Wilson's stubborness led to a deployment of American sailors and Marines in Mexico that he later regretted. Only the looming European war prevented the outbreak of full-scale war between the U.S. and Mexico.

Reagan resorted to similar desperation tactics last month to gain support for his unpopular, idiosyncratic policy. The day before the Senate voted on his aid request, Reagan's Administration--in the words of a senior Honduran official quoted in The New York Times--"deliberately exaggerated the seriousness of Nicaragua's recent border raid and pressed Honduras to ask for $20 million in aid."

The Senate voted to approve the aid, and members of the House who had voted against it the week before were ridiculed by the Administration and its lackeys as naive fools who were "soft on communism."

The boys in the White House deceitfully played up what was only the most recent of many such border raids in an effort to coerce the Senate to approve their aid request. They give millions to people trying to topple the Sandinistas, and then have the never to cry foul when the Sandinistas fight back.

Because of the climate of fear and hysteria the Administration has created, the Reaganites can expect the House to approve their aid request next week. While allegedly trying to bolster the democratic process in Central America, then, the Administration apparently has little respect for it here at home.

Nor, it seems, does it care to learn from history.