The Bush administration has been pushing to resolve debate about an Iraq security pact by July 31, negotiating with members of the country’s parliament to replace the expiring U.N. mandate that provides a legal authorization of the U.S. occupation.

Because of convenient technical loopholes, the pact does not amount to a treaty and thus does not require a vote in the U.S. Congress. Despite this, the agreement will play a significant role in determining the United States’ future involvement in Iraq, including the number of U.S. bases in the country, control of the airspace and legal jurisdiction of American personnel fighting in Iraq.

Considering the enormous consequence of the pact’s content and the intense debate in both U.S. and Iraqi political bodies, the Bush administration should extend the U.N. mandate and allow the next U.S. president to draft the United States’ future function in both Iraq and the region as a whole.

The deal, which has not been made public, is said to allow for as many as 58 military bases. Eager to draft support, the Bush administration has emphasized that the agreement does not allow for any permanent military bases. However, what the administration has termed “enduring” military bases are acceptable within the pact.

Though it initially exempted both American military personnel and military contractors from prosecution under Iraqi law, contractors are no longer outside Iraqi jurisdiction in the proposed pact. This was a point of heated debate in Iraq following a September 2007 incident in which contractors working for the private security firm Blackwater were accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians.

Special concerns lie in the deal’s delineation of acceptable American military action. Although Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zabari said Iraq had “made it absolutely clear that [it] will not be used for any offensive actions or for any attacks against any of Iraq’s neighbors,” the line between offensive and defensive actions is uncomfortably relative and subject to manipulation.

The convenience of American military action against neighboring Iran strains the already fragile relationship between the countries and encourages a buildup of defenses. Perhaps attempting to allay Iranian security fears, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki visited the neighboring country and addressed the security pact.

Now is not the time to take shortcuts or push through an agreement under an unnecessary deadline. If the fledgling Iraqi government is not entrusted with sufficient sovereignty — on which Maliki has commented that the pact infringes — repercussions will come in the future.

As Karl E. Meyer’s astutely pointed out in The New York Times, a 1930 pact between Britain and Iraq that ended the colonial power’s mandate granted only artificial Iraqi control. This led to a nationalist uprising and a military coup.

After overhearing a young high school student discussing his future career in the armed forces with a recruiter, I am reminded of the often-forgotten gravity of the situation. The truth is that both current and future generations are being committed to a conflict by a surreptitious pact. A volunteer army and the burdening of future taxpayers with the costs of war have made the conflict in Iraq increasingly irrelevant to everyday life.

Both the American people and the U.S. government must meaningfully engage challenges. The shadowy passing of the Iraq security pact is a step in the opposite direction.