The Irrelevance of Wikileaks

The damage caused by the WikiLeaks controversy has caused little real and lasting damage to American diplomacy, senior state department officials have concluded.

It emerged in private briefings to Congress by top diplomats that the fallout from the release of thousands of private diplomatic cables from all over the globe has not been especially bad. ~The Guardian

Via Andrew

Put another way, Wikileaks doesn’t matter very much, which is a pretty damning thing to say about the operation that was supposedly going to usher in a new era of anti-imperialist transparency. After dire warnings of subversion from hawks and misguided enthusiasm for the same subversion from critics of U.S. hegemony, Wikileaks has proved to be little more than a minor irritant. I was among those who overestimated its significance. This makes the government’s vendetta against Assange and his allies that much more pathetic and indefensible. Not only has Wikileaks broken no laws, but it hasn’t even done much to inconvenience the government. At most, it has embarrassed the government a little, and that’s it.