Population Loss Quotes
This is a very important quotation. It is often cited by preventive war hawks to show that deterrence might not be a sufficient inhibitor against an extreme ideological enemy. In this case it was political philosophy that would make the enemy willing to have the majority of its population die to reach the ideological objective. More fearful is the prospect of the Theocracy of Iran where the leaders may believe that nuclear jihad is a commandment of God. More critical is the Islamic theology which says that if most of the Iranian Muslim population die in a nuclear war that they start all those people will be martyrs and immediately go to God’s Paradise. Thus, even the dead Muslims are not victims and the nonbelievers should be killed. For extremely fanatical Muslims nuclear war can be a logical and holy course of action.
One of the worst problems facing Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the health care system. There was not yet a private sector to replace the Communist system and the health care system broke down and the lifespan of the average Russian actually went down significantly during that period. As an example, there was no way to purchase and import pharmaceuticals nor distribute the ones that were available.
While he thought his own country had been so badly impacted by the war, other nations were in worse shape and suffered more. Russia for example. And of course Germany brought total devastation on itself.
There was a terrible Malaria epidemic in Philadelphia that year. Most who could leave the city did so. It was so bad that most Philadelphians would have starved as the entire infrastructure had collapsed. But the free Blacks of the city had antibodies developed in Africa for malaria and were not hit as hard. They distributed food to those who had not died of the disease, and finally the epidemic subsided.
In actuality, Atlanta was only about 30% burned but it was the critical infrastructure that Sherman’s men destroyed so that Atlanta could not resupply the Confederate troops in the field. See {584690} for Sherman’s explanation.
earlier given as 100,000 dead The CIA had actively financed and supported a Coup by General Sukarto in Indonesia. There were horrible atrocities in Eastern Java and other areas where the populations were sympathetic to and would likely vote for the communists. Not only did the CIA do nothing to restrain these atrocities, but the only planes that were engaged were unmarked military jets flown by CIA contract pilots who bombed and strafed many of the Indonesian villages. Originally Ambassador Green had reported that “only” 100.000 Indonesians were killed (in just a few days), but as this testimony showed, the deliberate slaughter involved many more and some historians claim that there were even more murders. This one engagement probably involved many more deliberate killing of civilians in a few days than took place in the entire Vietnam war. However, since the hearings were classified, the Senators were not allowed to tell anyone. Even in the classified hearings Ambassador lied to the Congress about the CIA involvement. No one, including the CIA pilots who bombed the defenseless villages, was ever brought to justice for the killing of the 500,000+ civilians.
