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In Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play No Exit, three damned souls find themselves locked in a room in hell, where they are psychologically tortured forever. The Iraqis’ failure to meet the Aug. 15 deadline for a draft constitution, is more evidence that America is trapped in its’ own no exit hell. 

The president recently reported, “progress is being made. Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Yet, it is difficult for the average citizen to see this “progress.” The most recent Gallup poll finds that only 44 percent of Americans support the war—versus 65 percent in March of 2004. More telling is the poll result that 57 percent believe that the war has made the United States “less safe from terrorism.” 

Before the 2003 invasion, Brent Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, argued against an attack, warning that military action would, “divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism ... the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region.” Scowcroft opined that the most likely outcome for Iraq would be civil war, because of the existing antipathy between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. (These considerations led the previous President Bush to stop short of a full-scale occupation in 1991.) One by one Scowcroft’s warnings have come true; failure to agree on a constitution presages another step towards anarchy. 

After two years, the American public is finally realizing that we are ensnared in our own version of no exit. We see that the only thing that has been consistent about the Bush Iraq policy has been its ineptitude. Since the president declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 2, 2003, all of the Administration’s “evidence” justifying the invasion have been refuted: presence of WMDs, delivery systems, ties to Al Qaeda, etc. Moreover, the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq has strengthened the terrorist position and fueled discontent throughout the region. 

The failure of the Iraqi parliament to meet the Aug. 15 deadline for a draft constitution is the result of yet another Administration misstep. Bush advisers had an opportunity to head off the conflict over regional autonomy a year ago. When Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis were considering the American-written Transitional Administrative Law, in February 2004, the Kurds came up with a workable solution to the sticky problem of autonomy. Writing in the Aug. 11 New York Review of Books, diplomat and Middle-East expert Peter Galbraith reported that the Kurds proposed, and the Shiites and Sunnis accepted, a rule that, “the permanent constitutions would come into effect if ratified by a majority of Iraqis, but would only be operative in [each of the three regions] if ratified by a majority of [that region’s] voters.” The Bush administration foolishly balked at this compromise. 

Now, as the American public grows increasingly skeptical of this war, the Administration is ratcheting down expectations: the new Iraq will not be the model democracy the president touted, but instead a partial democracy, where all laws will be compliant with Islam—and women’s rights greatly diminished. The new Iraq will not be economically independent; it will not even have a self-supporting oil industry. Most telling, the administration has quietly abandoned its oft-stated objective of ending the insurgency; now it expects to reduce it to a level consistent with the turnover to Iraqi forces. Despite Bush’s bombast, we will stand down well before the Iraqi forces stand up. 

Although the administration publicized the draft Iraqi constitution as a major milestone, the critical objective for Bush and company occurs a year from now—the beginning of the 2006 Congressional races. Remembering that the invasion of Iraq was, in part, a device to help Republicans win the 2002 off-year elections, it seems unthinkable that the administration would let the occupation fester and, thereby, drag Republican Senators and Congress people down to defeat. Bush and company have to be aware that in the Aug. 2 special election, Ohio Democrat Paul Hackett nearly took a “safe” congressional seat from the Republicans on the basis of his anti-war campaign. 

We will probably see Bush institute a two-pronged Iraq strategy: First, he will drastically reduce the U.S. troop allocation, regardless of whether the Iraqi security forces are ready. Then, he will declare “victory,” much as Richard Nixon did at the end of the Vietnam war. To counter any negative press that a precipitous departure from Iraq might garner, Bush will find a way to distract the attention of the American public: the most likely source for such a diversion would be an attack on Iran’s nuclear capability. 

In a recent interview, Karen Armstrong, the writer and commentator on religion, warned that the war in Iraq ,coupled with Bush’s religious zealotry, is fanning the flames of fundamentalism. She worried that the administration would provoke Islamic fundamentalists into using weapons of mass destruction. That seems to be the “no exit” hell that Bush is leading us into: There is no exit from Iraq that does not leave us more vulnerable to terrorists. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.?