In re Lebanon and Proxy Fights

A good example from the AP today on how not to describe the civil war in Lebanon:

The violence is a reflection of Lebanon's political dysfunction, a legacy of years of civil war when the country became a proxy battleground for other nations. Lebanon walks a fragile fault line over Syria, which had troops on the ground here for nearly 30 years until 2005 and still has strong ties to Lebanon's security services.

As I noted last week, the better way to view outside involvement in Lebanon's protracted civil war is to recognize that would-be sponsors were more often than not captured and manipulated by their supposed proxies. Outside actors like Syria and Israel had little or no control over the conflict. Instead, they were frequently thrown over by their proxies for a better deal with a new sponsor. The Lebanese militias drove that conflict and not foreign states.