Lawrence Kaplan suggests I have abandoned my belief in Iraqi liberalism ("Quiet American II," August 1) because, he argues, I "prefer[ed]" a cleric-backed slate to win the January 2005 Iraqi elections. This is not quite right. In no way do I believe that liberalism is dead in Iraq, although achieving it remains an uphill battle. Our difference is about how to encourage liberalism.

Before the January elections, the Bush administration painted then-interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as a champion of liberalism. They portrayed him as the great white hope. Embassy officials and National Security Council staff described a reality to the White House that simply did not exist. Living outside the Green Zone, I heard increasingly shrill allegations from a variety of different Iraqis about Allawi's corruption. There was also discord among Iraqi Shia and Kurds regarding his willingness to embrace former Baathists. Even Sunni Arabs I spoke to complained about Allawi's failure to fulfill promises of strong leadership and better security. This was the root of my argument: Allawi could not win, and I counseled against putting all our eggs in one basket. Allawi said the right things, but he had no history of delivering. While the United Iraqi Alliance was backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani and, like the other lists, included some thugs and murderers, it was not homogeneous. Some members are Islamists. Others are quite liberal.

Politics is the art of the possible. Because the path to Iraqi liberalism could not be through the "secular" slate of Allawi, and because too many in the Kurdish slate were regional rather than national in focus, the only hope for liberalism will be through the victory of liberal factions within Sistani's religiously tinged slate. The analogous situation on the American left is the perennial debate about whether progressives should support Ralph Nader or the Democratic Party's candidate. Nader may be the truest expression of progressive beliefs, but, in 2000, a vote for Nader was sometimes a vote for Bush. Kaplan felt we should do the Iraqi equivalent of voting for Nader. I respectfully disagree. Liberalism will not be achieved through political martyrdom. Not believing in a loser is not the same as supporting Islamism.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.