Reply #61: "Paraguay: A Brief History of National Suicide (Gary Brecher, from The Exile) [View All]

[mojowork_n]

Before you read:

1.) "The Exile" is kind of like Russia's answer to The Onion, if The Onion's brand of satire had any actual teeth and claws.

2.) Gary Brecher is a pseudonym for the Internet's foremost critic of that leading neo-con pseudo-historian, Victor Davis Hansen. What Stephen Colbert is to Bill O'Lielly, Brecher is to Hansen, only funnier and sadder at the same time. G.B. is also known as 'The War Nerd', and focuses almost exclusively on military topics.

3.) Reflecting the zeitgeist of it's immediate post-Soviet era founding (when just about the whole damn country was "for sale"), the "Exile" happens to feature an exceptionally degenerate 'adult' section, which may cause flutters and palpitations among some of DU's gentle readers.

Introductory excerpt:

FRESNO, CA — Name a country that lost at least two thirds of its male population fighting three countries at once, and nearly managed to beat all three before being ground down and damn near wiped out. Second clue: this happened during the second-bloodiest war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.

Whatever country you nominated, I bet it wasn’t Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864-1870. To most war buffs the War of the Triple Alliance rates a big shrug, and Paraguay is more like a punchline than a country, a tiny landlocked South American sweatbox full of Nazi escapees creaking around cursing arthritis and the T-34. Paraguay is like a country by Mel Brooks.

But Paraguay is the correct answer, and I’m here to give the place its long overdue due. By the way, if you’re wondering what the first-bloodiest war in the Americas was, shame on you! Blue and Gray ring any bells? Gettysburg? America’s still got #1 all locked up, thanks to the Civil War, just possibly the greatest war ever. More than 600,000 dead, and most of them soldiers who died honorably, in open battle. Until you’ve been studying real war for a few years, you don’t realize how rare that kind of high, clean body count is. Like I’ve said before, most conflict is massacre and counter-massacre. Battles are rare.

And that reminds me, I have to quibble with these rankings, even though I feel dirty saying anything that could lower the ranking of our Civil War. What worries me is nobody seems to count the Spanish-vs-Aztec or Spanish-vs-Inca wars in the rankings. Nobody’s very sure how many people died in Mexico, but the simplest answer is “Most of ’em,” and since the Inca have been fighting the Spanish for 500 years at last count, they deserve an entry in the numbers game too.

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=15578&IBLOCK_ID=35