The revolutionary animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, once they have evicted the tyrannical farm owners, slip into the status quo, one that sees the leaders, in this case the pigs, emerge to perpetuate a system similar to the very one they worked to overthrow. In an earlier age, the arch-schemer Machiavelli might have smiled: getting others to do the dirty work would have met the approval of the Florentine thinker. It may be premature to suggest that the situation in Lebanon is heading towards such an Orwellian nightmare, or that the people who took to the streets earlier this year have been duped, but the ease with which many of the heroes of the Cedar Revolution appear to be slipping into old habits is cause for concern. We are not saying that our politicians will behave like Squealer, Orwell’s head pig, whose pact with the farmers ends the tale,