BEIRUT: Depending who you talk to, it was a crisis, a disturbance, an insurrection, or a revolution. It began with trouble in Tripoli. Soon, people were blowing up bridges and blocking roads.
Bombs were tearing through neighborhoods all over Beirut.
Men, arms, and ammunition flushed through the porous Lebanese-Syrian border. The Army lost control of large swathes of the country. Foreign intervention seemed both imminent and eminently disastrous. It was characterized as an internal implosion caused by the unbearable weight of outside interests.
