Here’s Why The Lebanese Didn’t Care About Wikileaks

Patrick Galey has an excellent piece over at the Huffington Post on why Wikileaks didn’t have a big effect on the Lebanese:

The cables we have so far seen on Lebanon are interesting, but not revelatory, in the same way that it is satisfying to catch a co-worker you long suspected of stealing your milk in the act of thievery. We know politicians lie, especially in Lebanon. We know that external pressures and allegiances fragment the domestic political scene and that US officials have their favorite parties, ordained from on high in Washington. It is scarcely necessary to mention the pervasive distrust of US agendas in this part of the world. […]

while the world stares agog at cable after cable of diplomatic duplicity, Lebanon’s weariness at political double-standards has not been refreshed just yet

What I find interesting is how Al-Akhbar (and its echo chamber Angry Arab) assumed that this will somehow revolutionize and change the debate in Lebanon. They covered this with such glee and such missionary zeal that for a while they have forgotten that they were preaching to the already converted, and that the rest were just shrugging and yawning.