We can all say that thousands people died but my question is: Why wasn't Kahn punished for his crime. He should have gotten death penalty for his crime. He has more deaths on his hands than Osama.
It could also be argued that Kirk should bear some possible negligent resposibility for those deaths because
he had Harriman imprisoned in the Enterprise brig, but then released him, and took him over to the Vengeance, setting the villain in a position to take over the vessel and use it as a weapon. Kirk had a terrorist captured and imprisoned, but then let him out, and then he went onto kill many more people than he did in his first attack - I can'tbelieve that the families of the potentially thousands of lost civilians would not be blaming Kirk for letting Harriman out - rather than seeing Kirk being honoured at his speech one year later at the mrmorial, I could see many people protesting him for negligence, saying he should have turned Harriman over to Marcus, to spare thousands of innocent lives ... the film definitely seemed to gloss over how large the death toll would have been, and the repurcussions and scandal for Starfleet, following such a disaster ...