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Because the truth is...relative. | |
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Kasparov Weighs In
This entry was posted on 12/3/2006 9:20 AM and is filed under All Posts,Iraq War.
For those of you who have managed to avoid crisis-level geekdom, you may not know who Garry Kasparov is. And shame on you.
Kasparov holds the titles of youngest ever World Chess Champion and longest reigning World Chess Champion. From his 1985 entry into professional chess, to his retirement in 2005, he maintained his ranking as the highest-rated player in the world. Simply put, he is widely regarded as the greatest chess player known in recorded history.
So what has this Russian genius gotten into since retirement? Why, politics, of course! He hasn't run for any offices, but he has founded the United Civil Front, an organization dedicated to thwarting Russia's slow backslide into totalitarianism, with an emphasis on the misrule of authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin. For this service, in April 2005, he was beaten over the head with a chess board by a disgruntled former fan.
In a less appealing vein, Kasparov has also written regularly in glowing support of America's War On Terror, and in particular, President's Bush War On Iraq. Even before his retirement, in August 2002, he was loudly banging the war drums—well ahead of many American conservatives—in calling for an invasion of Iraq. And Iran. And Syria.
The war on terror also has a powerful political dimension. It requires the U.S. to rebuild the nations ravaged by Islamic fundamentalism. We cannot wait for the internal liberalization of rogue countries.
There will be no peace in Gaza, no freedom from fear in Jerusalem, until we have prosecuted the war on terror in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus and elsewhere.
And as late as May, 2004, he was still passionately defending the debacle that Iraq had by then clearly become, and urging blind resilience in the face of catastrophic failure.
Since then, however, it appears he might have caught up with the rest of us. Yesterday, he published his first open criticism of the war since it began—on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, no less. He frames current events from his unique perspective as the world's greatest tactician of toys:
Thirty years as a chess player ingrained in me the importance of never losing sight of the big picture. Paying too much attention to one area of the chessboard can quickly lead to the collapse of your entire position. America and its allies are so focused on Iraq they are ceding territory all over the map. Even the vague goals of President Bush's ambiguous war on terror have been pushed aside by the crisis in Baghdad.
Now he tells us. I certainly appreciate Garry's coming around, but what on earth took him so long? And what does he mean by "the vague goals of President Bush's ambiguous war on terror"? Didn't the grandmaster himself sign on when he wrote, all the way back in 2002, that we "cannot wait for the internal liberalization of rogue countries"?
But there's no sense in getting peeved at Kasparov's conveniently timed about-face, when one realizes he hasn't really made one at all. As he goes on in today's column:
Pre-emptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan. However, if you attack Iraq, the potential to go after Iran and Syria must also be on the table.
Um, armed with what, Mr. Kasparov? As that old coot Zell Miller might ask, "spitballs?" Our military has been spent in Iraq. It is gone. We do not even have National Guard troops available to protect us from city-destroying hurricanes. They are in Iraq, too.
With notions like that, you wonder how he ever got so damn good at his game. Chess is a military strategy of finite resources. You don't get unlimited queens, or unlimited room to maneuver. Under the rules of any competitive chess tournament, you also do not get unlimited time.
Garry Kasparov is clearly a neoconservative. Yet, I confess to respecting his adherence to this utopian, sub-fascist ideology far more than others, and not because of my admiration of his chessplay. He is not a Paul Wolfowitz neoconservative, reared in the academic, bloodless halls of the University of Chicago, at the knee of neocon architect Leo Strauss.
Kasparov, like his fellow Eastern European dissident (and Iraq war supporter) Vaclav Havel, was reared under the boot of Communist totalitarianism. Having lived through real oppression, I can forgive them their hard-won naiveté when it comes to craving the liberation of others.
I cannot do the same for the likes of Wolfowitz, or Charles Krauthammer, or William Kristol, fantasist egomaniacs whose only brushes with tyranny were realized, regrettably, in their drooling cheerleading of our Constitutional immolation.    
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