Were Syrian claims about their presence in Lebanon correct after all?

In the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon claimed that the Syrian military presence was needed to maintain peace and stability in Lebanon. No doubt this was a self-serving argument meant to justify their domination over Lebanon but in the aftermath of the Hezbollah-Israeli War, they may have been right after all. This is because it is quite obvious that it is Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon than enabled Israel's planned all-out attack on Lebanon backed by U.S. encouragement and support.

Even after Israel withdrew from Lebanon, there were still many outstanding issues, amongst them continued Israeli incursions into Lebanese territory, Lebanese prisoners, Shebaa Farms, etc. There had been continuing skirmishes and low level fighting between Hezbollah and Israel from 2000 to now. In light of that, Hezbollah's raid that was nothing extraordinary and in fact Sharon faced this situation with Hezbollah many times when he was in power and decided not to use these pretexts to start all out war.

When Lebanese PM Harriri was assassinated and this led to the "Cedar Revolution" that wanted to rid Lebanon of Syrian presence once and for all (but which was supported by Hezbollah and most of the Shiite community), Syria finally decided to leave Lebanon. The anti-Syrian Lebanese rejoiced, but little did they know that it was Syrian military presence that had been protecting them from Israeli-US plans to wage all out war on Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah and weaken Iranian influence.

There's no question that if the Syrian army was still there, Israel would probably not have decided to wage all out war on Hezbollah over the raid which captured two soldiers. An attack on Lebanon under Syrian military occupation would have been an attack on Syria's army and would might have easily lead to a war between Israel vs Hezbollah & Syria which would have been far more risky than the Israel-Hezbollah war and resulted in Israeli restraint.

In light of this, I wonder if the anti-Syrian Lebanese regret forcing out the Syrian army from Lebanon? And in light of this, was Syrian claims to be a stabilizing force actually turning out to be true?