That is an interesting historical perspective, one that I had not considered before. Still, if anything, it supports the notion that the US is faltering as the world power.
BTW I'd be interested to see a comparison with deaths in rural Soviet Union under Stalin with the Irish situation. Seems to me like a similar situation and yet the deaths are pretty much attributed as murder under Stalin.
Ummm, that's because it was murder. See the (well written) works of the historian Robert Conquest. By the way, when the Soviet archives were opened up during the Yeltsin era, his estimations of the number of Soviet murders turned out to be almost exactly right (actually, a little on the low side).
I think of this sometimes when I think of my wife. She survived, with years of hunger, Mao's "Great Leap Forward", when 77,000,000 human beings -- men, women, children dying as their mothers held them and watched -- were systematically starved to death.
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." -- Stalin, an expert on the subject
I was, of course, refering to the agricultural deaths. To some extent those seem similar to the situation in Ireland and possibly China under Mao. To what extent can attribute a failed policy as murder? Is the US responsable for the 1 million or so deaths in Iraq? Probably not.
BTW I'd be interested to see a comparison with deaths in rural Soviet Union under Stalin with the Irish situation. Seems to me like a similar situation and yet the deaths are pretty much attributed as murder under Stalin.