Book Review: “What Happened” by Hillary Clinton (September 2017)

Commentary by Dr. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa
School of Law. The Zambian Open University.

Hillary Clinton has a new book out. It is entitled, “What Happened?” that explains her election loss to Donald Trump. One of the reasons she proffers inevitably is the possibility of Russian intervention in the election that tipped the scales in Trump’s way.

Americans have had their lives contorted by the very notion that a foreign power could intervene in their sacred internal democratic politics that must be based on free choice by Americans to choose their own President.

There are a number of reasons given for the loss which are known and have been written about in trillions of words. For most of the world, it is the hypocrisy about the Russian intervention that stands out.

The Special Issue of Foreign Affairs of July/August 2014 (pictured) bears the same question that Hillary asked in relation to her loss but in this Issue of Foreign Affairs, “What Really Happened” is in relation to American intervention in four case studies that led to derailment of elections and the massacre of thousands of people. Democracy has not truly returned to Iran (1953), Congo (1961), Pakistan (1971) and only recently has it returned to Chile (1973). The book by Armando Uribe (pictured) entitled The Black Book of American Intervention in Chile makes for sad reading as to the utter brutality of the subversion of the Chilean democracy by America, the lack of concern by the Americans about free choices by the Chileans as to who their leaders should be.

Hillary Clinton and the Americans, now have the temerity through crocodile tears to bemoan the alleged subversion of their ethos by the Russians when they themselves have been the main destroyers of people’s democracies from the end of the 1800s to the present!
Hillary, we don’t know exactly “What Happened?” to you during the election of 2016, but we know “What Really Happened” to Iran, Congo, Pakistan, Chile and many countries that led to the collapse of their democracies and the massacre of their people: American intervention. So get used to your own medicine. There is karma in this world. If Russia did it to you, at least it did it with civility and class, but America has been doing it with immense casual brutality and permanence.