Who is responsible for more deaths?:
Joseph Stalin or Bill Clinton
| Stalin | Clinton | ||
| Prison deaths (including during the war years): | 86,582 | Executions: | 4141 |
| Executions: | 786,098 | Sanctions on Iraq: | >500,0002 (plus adults) |
| Kulak resettlement: | 389,521 | Rwandan Genocide: | >800,0003 (plus those killed after the RPF came to power) |
| GULAG deaths (including during the war years): | 1,053,829 | Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant (Sudan) Bombing: | >20,0004 (“several tens of thousands” – 20,000 is a low estimate) |
| First/Second Congo War5: | ~2,700,0006 | ||
| Turkey’s war against the Kurds7: | >40,0008 | ||
| Bombing of Yugoslavia: | 1,5009 | ||
| First Battle of Mogadishu | ~50010 | ||
| Total: | ~2.3 million11 | Total | ~4 million* |
By tallying things in this way, we are preceding from two assumptions:
- State leaders bare responsibility for deaths while they are in office
- Deaths caused directly or indirectly from state policy can be attributed to state leaders
Therefore, following this methodology, we can conclude that both Joseph Stalin and Bill Clinton hold responsibility for the excess deaths caused under their respective terms in office. However, this methodology leads us to conclude that, contrary to popular belief, the death toll under Bill Clinton’s leadership between January 20, 1993 and January 20, 2001 is higher than the death toll under Joseph Stalin’s leadership between ~1929 and March 5, 1953.
5 The Second Congo War continued on to 2003, so not all deaths happened during Clinton’s time in office. However, the vast majority of the fighting and the major campaigns occurred before Joseph Kabila became president of the DRC in 2001.
7 Similarly, not all of the deaths occurred while Bill Clinton was president.
8 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/11/turkish-forces-kill-32-kurdish-militants-in-bloody-weekend-as-conflict-escalates
11 All statistics regarding Stalin taken from: Getty, John Arch, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemskov. “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence,” n.d. https://web.archive.org/web/20080611064213/http:/www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html.
*Conflicts not included, due to difficulty of finding reliable numbers for the time period: Indonesia’s genocide of East Timor under General Suharto, the invasion of Bosnia in 1992, KLA terrorism in Yugoslavia throughout the 90s, bombing of Iraq in 1998, the situation in Somalia following the First Battle of Mogadishu, support for the military dictatorship in Haiti, support for Israeli Apartheid, consequences of NAFTA in Mexico, extension of sanctions on Cuba, bombing of Afghanistan at the same time as Al-Shifa in Sudan, bombing of Iraq in 1993, support for the Colombian government throughout the 90s.
Just sayin’.
