"Most of the world -- particularly Americans -- don't know the good things Hezbollah's done for Lebanon," a good friend and former Marine who served with the Multinational Force in Beirut in 1982, wrote to me in an e-mail yesterday. But he adds: "Please don't construe that as an endorsement."

Good things? Most of Lebanon's infrastructure is in tatters, about 650 civilians are dead, thousands wounded and nearly 1 million Lebanese have become refugees in their own country because of Hezbollah's action: the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others.

My Marine friend knows a thing or two about Hezbollah. As a member of the Multinational Force he often patrolled Beirut's southern suburbs on foot and got to know many of the local people, including some Hezbollah fighters. It's those very same suburbs that have been pounded into dust for the past 20 days, as Israel tries to reduce the Shiite militia's power, and thus its influence.

Indeed, the group considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel runs charitable organizations at home, picking up where the Lebanese state has failed to provide schools, daycare centers, hospitals, clinics and other social services -- all free -- to help the inhabitants of the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut, typically the poorest people, those on the bottom of the Lebanese social ladder. A relative asked me to explain why a "charitable organization at home doubles as a terrorist organization outside of its borders?"

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder -- but then again, so is the terrorist. The old adage that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter has never been closer to the truth in this context. Yes, Hezbollah is seen as a terrorist group by many. They are believed to have been responsible for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983 followed by the attack on the Marine compound the following October which killed 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly U.S. Marines. Hezbollah is also believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of American and other foreign citizens in Lebanon in the 1980s. Some, like AP journalist Terry Anderson, were held more than seven years, most of it in a dark basement chained to a radiator.

But others -- particularly the inhabitants of south Lebanon -- see in Hezbollah a national resistance group who by their persistent attacks on Israeli troops in south Lebanon forced Israel in 2000 to withdraw. And they see in Hezbollah a charitable group that took care of them when the Lebanese state was nowhere to help.

Is it a militia? Yes, but as the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah has recently said, this current battle could be Hezbollah's last as the group will most likely, either voluntarily or by force, lay down its arms at the end of this round of violence and integrate the Lebanese political system.

Of course not everyone is so confident. One former CIA operative sees in Hezbollah "the cat's-paw of Iran, created, funded, trained, and wholly-owned by the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps.

"The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 provided a handy hook on which to hang Tehran's drive for regional expansionism, and the poor Shiites of southern Lebanon, drowning in poverty and primitive religiosity, bought it (for lack of much alternative)," said the former CIA agent, now specializing in Iranian affairs.

"It's radical Shiite clerics bent on exporting their revolution and expanding the Persian region of influence in the Middle East -- at the expense of the Sunnis, primarily," adds the former spy. "Israel just happens to be a convenient excuse.

Another reader's advice is "Let's not be naive: the root of the problem in this particular case is Iran and the ayatollahs. They are extremist, fanatics and they hate Israel. They just cannot tolerate a non-Islamic country. They will always make mischief and will never accept any kind of peace. Loss of human life is not important for them just to achieve their propaganda. Their aim is to destroy Israel.

"There already would have been peace in the region if there was no interference by foreign countries like Iran and Syria," writes Sam. As opposed to interference from other foreign countries, like Uncle Sam.

"Until that regime in Tehran is replaced with a secular, democratically elected, truly representative one, that eschews nuclear weapons and terrorism as tools of state policy, there will never be peace in the Middle East," the former CIA operative wrote to me in an email. Possibly, but then again the same can be said about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

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