I agree totally. You may also want to take a look at Mike Davis's book Late Victorian Holocausts, which gives an account of the tens of millions of people in the global south, especially China and India, who died at the hands of imperialism in the second half of the 19th century. Think Ireland multiplied 60 fold.
While we're at it, note the American bombing campaigns that killed over 5 million in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Vietnam would need 40 walls the size of the wall in DC for the names of their dead.
I read once that one of the powerful, President Jimmy Carter, had built some of his foreign policy around human rights; and that Latin Americans noted the reduced oppression of their own rulers during his administration. Once Reagan got in, of course, those rulers and ttheir successors returned to their previous brutality.
On foreign policy, Jimmy Carter was close to the rare good guy. (On neoliberalism, not so much.) But among the myriad bad guys, there is bad and worse. The distinction is important.
I agree totally. You may also want to take a look at Mike Davis's book Late Victorian Holocausts, which gives an account of the tens of millions of people in the global south, especially China and India, who died at the hands of imperialism in the second half of the 19th century. Think Ireland multiplied 60 fold.
While we're at it, note the American bombing campaigns that killed over 5 million in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Vietnam would need 40 walls the size of the wall in DC for the names of their dead.
I read once that one of the powerful, President Jimmy Carter, had built some of his foreign policy around human rights; and that Latin Americans noted the reduced oppression of their own rulers during his administration. Once Reagan got in, of course, those rulers and ttheir successors returned to their previous brutality.
We can always hope.
On foreign policy, Jimmy Carter was close to the rare good guy. (On neoliberalism, not so much.) But among the myriad bad guys, there is bad and worse. The distinction is important.
One minor quibble. The former Belgian Congo hasn't been called Zaire for some time. I think it's now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Leopold gets some accountability in myth anyway, FWIW. Consider these lines from Vachel Lindsay, with which you're likely already familiar:
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Helping to remember at some level the atrocites.