If only John Kerry had been president, might Iran's powerful clerics have decided instead to back a more pragmatic Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani? Might we never have heard clerics urging voters to the polls with words like this: "Every vote you cast is a bullet in the heart of America''?
Perhaps, perhaps, but we'll never know. Given that Iran's elections were arranged in advance by the country's clerics, it seems likely we'd be right where we are: Trying to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons and from keeping its promise to erase Israel from the map through its terrorist arm, Hezbollah.
Finally, we come to Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians. With his broader focus, could Kerry have dissuaded Palestinians from electing Hamas to govern them? Or Syria to stop funding Hamas? Or prevented southern Lebanese from electing 14 members of Hezbollah to represent them in that country's Parliament?
These are but some of the events that have transpired in the past year and a half. Whether a different approach to Iraq would have simplified our present task of stabilizing the region is unknowable. But Kerry's boast in the midst of chaos, death and ruin is an embarrassing expression of political hubris that should make even loyal Democrats cut and run.
Kerry did get one thing perfectly right when he said we need to destroy Hezbollah. Israel apparently is aiming to do just that. Whatever might have been two years ago, Israel today must be grateful that George Bush — not John Kerry — is its wingman.