Garry Kasparov on the War on Terror/WSJ

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002087


Kasparov decribes parallels with WWII, and why he says we must take the war on terror to Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran and Riyadh. An opinion piece by the world's highest ranked chess player.

Wow!!!!!

There is no question that peace in the Middle East

goes first through Baghdad. Once Sadam is taken out the Saudi's will fall inline. Damascus will

behave and stop funding Hamas and Hezbullah or they will share the same fate as Sadam. Only then

will we see peace in Israel when the Palestinians

realize they have nobody supporting their path of

destruction and terror.


Bruce

I hold Garry Kasparov the Chess player in the highest possible esteem as such , but as far as politics or business are concerned he is at the informed amateur level, at best. (On top of that, he is lousy as far as his personal honor is concerned but that's another story.)


His record as a patzer outside Chess is impeccable :


*** Kaparov was arguing in favor of the Azerbaidzanis in their war against the Armenians over a piece of contested terroritory. He even tried to enlist the U.S. to back the Azeris in that foolish conflict -- State Dept politely brushed him off. (He got to be a hero in Baku for his troubles, at least.)


*** He was a supporter of Andropov, then he dropped him in favor of Gorbatchev, whom he dropped in favor of Yeltsin. Then he decided that he would enter politics himself. (His mom, on whom he dotes, talked him out of that nonsense.)


*** If the World Chess Federation, FIDE, is in such a mess today, it is primarily Kasparov's fault. He threw his weight behind some crazy scheme that would supposedly "look more after pro players' interests" (aganist all grassroots playing, actually) and then broke off to start his own FIDE, called Grandmasters' Association. He broke off that one too and started on another venture, taking some investors down, ad nauseum. In the process, he abandoned without compensation a dozen GMs who were foolish enough to trust him and ended up broke since they didn't have his commercial clout.


.. I could go on but I won't. Suffice to say that invoking Kasparov's opinion on any matter besides pure Chess would just get you bellylaughs from Chess grandmasters. And they know better.


--Cyrus

Kasparov is far from perfect, but that doesn't mean his opinions, a stated in that article, don't make a lot of sense.


Mark Furhman was a racist and a crooked cop. That doesn't necessarily mean O.J. was innocent, does it? Isn't is possible that the cop was racist and O.J. committed murder?


I'd be more intersted in hearing you respond to the legitimate points he raised rather than engage in a character assasination.

By the way : It's not "character assassination" (again with the verbosity!), but simply a statement of facts. I had the opportunity dozens of times to those views about Kasparov's behavior in completely different, non-Middle East contexts each time and I wrote the same stuff, if not more. The fact is that Kasparov, as a social or political commentator and as a business entrepreneur, sucks big time.


But I did not post my description of the ex-World Champion as a "response" to the article he wrote (or even ghost-wrote). The article, in fact, contains many valid points, although they are drowned in the usual Kasparovian sea of generalities and irrevelance. What I tried to do is warn you against using Kasparov as a witness for your prosecution against world terrorism. He is simply unreliable.


..Just my way of saying that I won't really hold it against you if Garry tomorrow starts singing the praises of Osama bin Laden. (Garry's volta face's are legendary.)


--Cyrus

Fair enough. And if Gary starts supporting Bin Laden tommorow, I will disagree with him. Regardless, I agree with his article, and what he thinks a week or a month from now will not change my agreeing with that article.

...in the Playboy Interview in which he forecast the inevitable disintegration of the USSR. I got the year wrong when I posted this over a year ago, but it was a very insightful article. His prediction occurred, I believe, during Andropov or Gorbachev's years (in the late 80's, maybe 1989?... I previously erroneouly posted it was in 1979)...at a time when the horizon might have been glimpsed somewhat but it was far from certain that a breakup and collapse could occur.


I think his insightfulness and strategy in the WSJ interview is pretty darn good. He is likely especially correct that if we replace with Saddam's regime, and then stop the offensive against the rest of militant Islam, it could prove disastrous.

Some GMs call Kasparov a gorilla, which reflects, according to whom you ask, his tastes in clothes, the fact that he has a lot of hairs on his back or his boorish manners. (Of course, most human GMs lose to Garry, so their pique is easy to understand.)


But I would rather call the ex-World Champion a monkey, if I absolutely had to call him something from the anthropoid family : As in, a monkey typing furiously at a typewriter, that gets to write a correct sentence after N trials.


Which translates to Kasparov getting it so wrong so many times, that when he gets it right, it can only be by accident. And not prescience.


--Cyrus