In another excellent column, Michael J. Totten interviews the vice president of Lebanon’s Kataeb (Phalangist) Party: Where the Middle East Fights Its Wars.

I visited Lebanon after wrapping up my last trip to Iraq, and was pleasantly surprised all over again by how much nicer Beirut is than Baghdad despite all its troubles. It’s still a mess, of course, but that’s because the region it reflects is a mess.

Salim al-Sayegh, the Kataeb (Phalangist) Party’s vice president, agreed to sit down with me and discuss Lebanon’s — and therefore the region’s — endlessly dysfunctional and occasionally explosive political problems. Like most parties in Lebanon, the Kataeb has a dark past, had a militia that behaved terribly during the long civil war, and has since mellowed and turned mainstream. It’s a part of the anti-Syrian “March 14” coalition, and one of its members of parliament — Pierre Gemayel, son of former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel — was assassinated by gunmen in 2006. Tens of thousands of Christians, Sunnis, and Druze attended his funeral in downtown Beirut.

The party’s vice president and I spoke before the election this summer when “March 14” beat Hezbollah. He started off by telling me just how important he thought that election was, not just for Lebanon, but for the whole Middle East.