"What do you mean?  I didn't do it.  Don't blame me, it was him!"  We must have heard these words thousands of times; however they have recently become far more frightening as they are often heard not on grade school playgrounds, but in the halls of Departments of State the world over.  Fighting wars used to be the exclusive domain of sovereign powers.  Waging symmetric war -- that is, army to army -- has now become far too costly both in treasure and personnel, especially when waged against a modern industrialized power.  As such, many of the world's most disagreeable regimes have now made asymmetrical warfare, through the use of proxies, virtually de rigueur.

 Last summer's particularly nasty war in Lebanon pitted sovereign Israel against Iran and Syria's proxy: Hezbollah.  Iran dares not confront the United States directly but is covertly sponsoring many Shi'ite proxies in Iraq to hit American troops.  Sudan conveniently blames the "Janjaweed" over the massacres in Darfur, even when its own government planes have bombed villages to clear the way for the "insurgents."  When the PLO morphed into the Palestinian Authority following the Oslo accords in 1994, the dominant Fatah party quickly formed the "Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades" who continued the movement's terror campaign against Israel unabated.  Even Hamas, a terrorist group in its own right, after gaining legitimacy following Palestinian elections in 2006, simply changed the name of its militants to the "Al-Qassam Brigades" who's masked gunmen could then continue firing missiles into Israel and throwing rival Fatah activists off buildings while respectably dressed Hamas "spokespeople" could say "We knew nothing about this outrage!"  It would seem that these governments no longer wage war, it's always a "troublesome splinter group" that's responsible.  The problem is that now even the splinter groups have splinter groups.  The proxies now have their own proxies!

Why the proliferation of proxy militias killing civilians and destabilizing the world order?  The simple answer is that, as a political strategy, they have worked flawlessly.  Countries who sponsor terror proxies have been very adept at the use of "plausible deniability," literally the "It wasn't me, it was him" defense. 

When the Reagan administration pulled out of Lebanon in 1984, it was in response to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans by a previously unknown group called "the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement."  In fact, this group was put together by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who also train and supply Hezbollah today.  The US did virtually nothing in response to the attack, and the pullout from Lebanon achieved Iran's aims of distancing American power from the Middle East.  When another Iranian proxy hit another US barracks, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the response was again virtually nil.  Not surprisingly, governments hostile to the US saw this successful strategy and repeated it many times, including The USS Cole bombing in Yemen in 2000. 

On June 24, 2007, another previously unknown group the "Jihad Badr Brigade" killed 6 UN Peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon, after firing a few errant missiles into Israel a week prior.  This "militant group" has been found to be linked to Hezbollah.  Hezbollah, like Hamas, is trying to re-brand itself a political party and also, like Hamas, refuses to give up its (UN outlawed) independent militia.  The militia simply renames itself whenever politically expedient.  The same people are committing atrocities, the same people are killing civilians, but armed with a fresh new name and grievance the world somehow treats this as a new problem rather than an all too familiar old one.

The solution to this problem is as readily apparent as on any grade school playground: Consequences.  Like any child looking to test authority, a lack of consequences only reinforces a sense of invulnerability and a belief that they are somehow not bound by the same rules that everyone else must play by.  Like an errant bully using weaker kids to achieve his goals, rogue nations use proxies to achieve their ends while avoiding the consequences of direct involvement.  To begin to see Peace in the Middle East, there must first be order and security.  To achieve order and security, rogue nations must be told -- in no uncertain terms -- that the arming, financing, and support of terrorist proxies is unacceptable and carries with it stern consequences.

This cannot be the laughable response of endless bickering in the UN Security Council where, even after repeated flouting of resolution after resolution, Iran continues its nuclear program virtually unabated as the West argues with Russia and China over increasingly meaningless sanctions.  Iran must understand that a serious price needs to be paid for supporting  militias that kill American troops; Syria must understand that a serious price needs to be paid for re-arming Hezbollah; and Sudan must understand that a serious price needs to be paid for its tacit support of the Janjaweed and their cleansing of Blacks from Darfur in favor of their Arab brethren.

A new treaty needs to be circulated between the great powers of this age, the G-8 countries plus China and Australia, that together provide the vast majority of military "peace keepers" that calls for automatic sanctions for any regime found to sponsor, support and encourage terror organizations.  Rogue nations can no longer be allowed to hide under the safety of sweet-heart oil contracts to China or lucrative arms contracts with Russia.  The time to act is now, before a nuclear armed Iran decides to "lose" a couple of warheads in Hezbollah’s direction only to say "What do you mean?  It wasn't us.  See it was them!"