Governments Kill More People Than Wars

U.S. Foreign Policy Forum

GOVERNMENTS KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN WARS

Mass-murderer Pol Pot was run to ground this week in the remote jungle of northern Cambodia. Leader of the notorious Khmer Rouge, Pot ordered the killing of at least one million `class enemies' in Cambodia's Killing Fields.
Pot is a monster, and deserves to be buried alive, like many of his victims. This marxist madman reminds us of an amazing, but little-know fact: more people have been killed in the 20th Century by their own governments than by all wars combined.

About 25 million soldiers died in World Wars I and II. Another 12 million were killed in this century's other wars and revolutions, a total of 37 million dead.


Under Lenin and Stalin, the Soviet government became the greatest mass-murderer in history. Lenin's collectivization and purges of 1921-1922 caused 4 million deaths. In 1932, Stalin ordered Ukraine starved to enforce collectivization and crush Ukrainian nationalism. At least 8 million Ukrainians were murdered. Others resorted to cannibalism.
From 1917 to Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union, worshipped by leftists around the world as the acme of human political accomplishment, shot, tortured, beat, froze or starved to death at least 40 million of its people. Some Russian historians claim the true figure is even higher. In an ugly spasm of deja-vu, Russian troops slaughtered 80,000 Chechen civilians over the past two years.


In China. Great Helmsman Mao Zedong had 2 million `class enemies' shot when the communists took power. Another million Tibetans and Turkestani Muslims were `liquidated.' from 1950-1975. During Mao's crazy Great Leap Forward, in which China's farmers were collectivized en masse, an estimated 30 million or more people starved to death. Another two million are said to have been died in Mao's Cultural Revolution. Total: 35 million dead.

Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 12 million civilians, half of them Jews. The Nazis exterminated people because of race; the communists because of class or nationality. Hitler killed with gas; Stalin with bullets, cold, and hunger.
Some two million German civilians were killed in 1945, and at least 200,000 died in communist concentration camps from 1945-1953. The victories Allies handed back 2 million anti-communist Soviet citizens to Stalin in 1945: he had half shot, and the rest sent to Arctic death camps.


During World War I, the Ottoman Empire slaughtered or starved up to 2 million Armenians, the first great genocide of the new century.

In the early 1960's, 600,000 ethnic Chinese were massacred in Indonesia by government-encouraged mobs and soldiers.

During the Marcos era in the Philippines, 75,000 Muslims were massacred by government paramilitary gangs.

In 1971, Pakistani troops killed tens of thousands of Bengalis in former East Pakistan. Indian security forces and police have massacred great numbers of tribesmen in border regions, and many civilians in Kashmir and Punjab.

In the 1980's, Ethiopia's marxist regime denied seeds to `capitalist' farmers, causing a million people to starve to death.

A half-century of tribal massacres between Hutu and Tutsi culminated in the recent slaughter of half a million Tutsi civilians by Rwanda's Hutu government.

Serbia's nazi-nationalist regime conducted the massacre of 200,000 Muslim civilians in Bosnia.

There are many other examples. But just the figures cited above amount to almost 100 million deaths this century - deaths that were not caused by war or revolution, but by the conscious decision of tyrants, politicians, or bureaucrats to murder great numbers of their own people for reasons of ideology, religion, race or land.
Compare: 100 million people murdered by governments this century; 75% by communist regimes - to about 38 million killed in all wars and conflicts.

So let Cambodia's by now almost forgotten Pol Pot remind us that big governments, particularly those driven by ideology and idealism, have been a greater menace than big armies, heavy armaments, - even nuclear weapons.

In fact, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killed five times more civilians than did atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You should try never to speak those words or put them in print again. (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge) This is best left for horrible human history file buried someplace along with Hitler.

FYI- Automobiles kill more people than governments.

it was not the concept of big government that killed these people, it was terrible dictators with no respect for human life.

As Coogee Beach has pointed out to me, if we just ignore these actions, then everythign will just be ok. Don't get involved. Just ignore them, other wise you might kill some innocent people stopping it.

al Qaeda would definitely use nukes first chance they got

Nukes aren't difficult to construct, in principle. Weapons grade fissionable material is hard to make. A terrorist group would not have the resources to make it, but if they could buy it on the black market they could probably make a bomb. Missile delivery systems, especially long range ones, are not likely to ever fall into terrorist hands, but you don't need a missile. You can plant a low grade nuclear bomb in a New York subway restroom.

The biggest threat are the missing Soviet suitcase bombs, with all those ex-KGB and soviet scientists starving for cash. Scary stuff.

Stuff like Sarin, VX and Anthrax are the most likely scenarios though.

- woolfe