Reading through the report of the Iraq Study Group during the past couple days, I stumbled upon an interesting suggestion in their Recommendation 63:

“To combat corruption, the U.S. government should urge the Iraqi government to post all oil contracts, volumes, and prices on the Web so that Iraqis and outside observers can track exports and export revenues.”

What a clever idea: creating an environment of openness, so the whole world can watch what’s going on with the billions of dollars of oil revenue that should be funding Iraq’s reconstruction, but is apparently disappearing into the bank accounts of criminals, thugs, insurgents, terrorists, politicians, lobbyists, and God only who else. Sadly, I think the chances of this recommendation being accepted and acted on by the U.S. government, let alone implemented by the Iraqi government, are probably nil. But it got me to thinking about a broader issue: how can citizens around the world use the Internet and the Web to (a) obtain information about what’s really going on in Iraq, without the usual distortion, bias, and obfuscation created by government spokesmen and mainstream media, and (b) possibly use some form of grassroots effort to influence what’s going on over there, in some positive way?

The alternative is to continue listening, in a more or less passive way, to the speeches, reports, and sound-bite commentaries from mass-media journalists and “talking heads” on television. But when I listen to the comments from the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group, alongside the comments from President Bush and his Press Secretary, Tony Snow, I have to wonder if I’m living on the same planet as these people. The report says, “‘Stay the course’ is no longer viable,” but Tony Snow says, “’stay the course’ is not the policy. And you know the President has been saying that for months.” Huh? Everyone, it seems, is desperately trying to “spin” their interpretation of current events to support their position — which may or may not have anything to do with the reality on the ground. Ever since I watched former Secretary of State Colin Powell give his impassioned speech before the U.N. Security Council in early 2003, about the imminent dangers of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction — only to learn later, as he himself learned — that the “evidence” he presented was exaggerated, incorrect, and misleading, I’ve felt that nothing that any of the politicians — whether Republican or Democrat, whether American or British or Iraqi — can be trusted.

So what’s the alternative? As for getting more accurate information, one solution is to go to Iraq and look at things through one’s own eyes. But I’m too old for that; and I would only have the time and energy to personally see a tiny fraction of the chaos in various parts of the country; and for all I know, I’d be blown up or shot on the day I arrived.

Another option is to get as much information as possible from second-hand sources that you know and trust. Arguably, there are 140,000 such sources right now, in the form of U.S. military personnel who have various forms of communicating to the friends and families back home. If you assume that each service-person has two or three “personal connections” back home, that presumably means that somewhere between a quarter-million and half-million Americans are getting some plain-spoken, unvarnished information that can be used as a “sanity check” to see if the politicians are making any sense at all. And of course, I’m expressing an entirely parochial perspective here: in addition to the 140,000 American military personnel, there are a few thousand others from England and whatever countries are left in the so-called “coalition of the willing.” But more important, there are literally millions of native Iraqis still in the country, not to mention the hundreds of thousands who have fled the country for refuge in Jordan, Syria, and various other countries.

But I don’t know any of them, and I don’t even know any of my own country’s military personnel; I suspect the same is true for 99% of other Americans. So what else can we do? Well, here’s one fairly simple, obvious idea: start subscribing to a handful of blogs, whether written by Iraqis or Americans or anyone else, to get a first-hand commentary on the situation. What’s that? You say blogs are opinionated and unreliable? Puh-leeeeeeze!! So is every other piece of information that I’m getting at the moment! At least when I read a blog, I’m getting a first-hand account from someone who almost certainly has less incentive, and less skill, at slanting and spinning and manipulating the information he conveys than the professional politicians. Obviously, I won’t trust everything I read in someone’s blog about Iraq; but I’ve gained enough experience reading hundreds of other blogs — on topics ranging from sports to politics to technology, etc — that I’m pretty sure I can weed out 99% of the nut-cases, crackpots, and blatantly unreliable bloggers fairly quickly. I can use the “reputation economy” of the Internet to gradually learn whose blogs are considered, by other people, to be fair, accurate, balanced, and objective. It may take 6-12 months to identify a collection of 10-20 blogs that provide the alternative information I need, but I’m confident that it can be done.

Where to start? Well, that’s pretty obvious: I simply Googled the phrase “Iraq blogs.” It took Google a mere 0.21 seconds (why on earth do they bother telling me how long it took? Who cares?) to present me with a list of 44,300,000 hits. The first item on the list is something called Iraq Blog Count, which lists 227 blogs about Iraq — some in Arabic, but most apparently in English. And the next item on the list is Iraq Blogs, which describes itself as “a firsthand view of Iraq from the online weblogs of soldiers and civilians who are there now.” Next is Iraq Blogs, which seems to be a page providing links to about 30 Iraq-related blogs. And Yahoo has its own list of Iraq blogs, Iraq War Blogs and Diaries, which I wouldn’t have known about if Google hadn’t told me. And the list goes on … so I don’t think I’ll have any shortage of material to work with.

Okay, so what else can the Internet and Web 2.0 to help us figure out — at the grass-roots level — what to do about this mess? Well, if you think the Iraq Study Group made a useful contribution, what about magnifying its approach a million-fold? What about a Wikipedia-style collaborative effort, with literally millions of citizens around the world, contributing their ideas and suggestions? I realize there’s no such mechanism in existence today; but after all, Wikipedia has only been around for five years. And we do have WikiCongress now, which may provide some insight as to how legislation gets created and passed in the U.S. House and Senate. So perhaps a “WikiIraq” would serve as an enlarged version of the Iraq Study Group, with enough influence that political leaders would actually have to pay attention.

Of course, that’s the ultimate question: do our political leaders actually have to pay attention to anything they hear? President Bush’s December 9th radio address, for example, expressed gratitude for, and recognition of, the report from the Iraq Study Group — but gave no indication of having heard the negative assessment that most observers saw in that report, such as the first sentence of the Executive Summary: “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” What bothers me most is not that President Bush will reject all 79 recommendations from the Iraq Study Group, but that he probably won’t even acknowledge the existence of more than one or two of the recommendations, let alone provide a thoughtful, rational explanation of his rejection.

If the citizens of this country — or, for that matter, any free society — believe that their leaders are not listening, they have a few obvious options, short of disinterring Patrick Henry and his friends and starting all over again. They can vote the rascals out of office; American voters did just that in November, in sufficient numbers to change the political balance of control in the House and the Senate. They’ll have the opportunity to do the same thing at the Presidential level in November 2008 — but that’s still two years away, which leaves far too much time for additional bloodshed and chaos.

The people can also demand — through petitions, letters, phone calls, emails, personal visits, marches, and demonstrations — that their representatives in the House use the power of the purse, and demand that spending for the Iraq war be curtailed or eliminated. Indeed, just dealing with such financial issues as part of the normal budgeting process would be an enormous improvement. As the Iraq Study Group observed, on page 91 of its report:

“First, most of the costs of the war show up not in the normal budget but in requests for emergency supplemental appropriations. This means that funding requests are drawn up outside the normal budget process, are not offset by budgetary reductions elsewhere, and move quickly to the White House with minimal scrutiny. Bypassing the normal review erodes budget discipline and accountability.

“Finally, circumvention of the budget process by the executive branch erodes oversight and review by Congress. The authorizing committees (including the House and Senate Armed Services committees) spend the better part of a year reviewing the President’s annual budget request. When the President submits an emergency supplemental request, the authorizing committees are bypassed. The request goes directly to the appropriations committees, and they are pressured by the need to act quickly so that troops in the field do not run out of funds. The result is a spending bill that passes Congress with perfunctory review. Even worse, the must-pass appropriations bill becomes loaded with special spending projects that would not survive the normal review process.”

Unfortunately, the incoming Democratic leadership has strongly hinted that it has no intention of shutting off this ongoing stream of emergency appropriations (how can it be an “emergency” after four years of war? is the need for additional funds that much of a surprise every time it occurs?). And I think pigs will fly before President Bush accepts this recommendation from the Iraq Study Group (which is condensed into a succinct summary in its Recommendation 72). So even though the citizens of this country expressed their opinions by voting in new Congressional and Senate leadership in November 2006, it seems that the reality is that — at the grassroots level — we have no power here. No power, that is, unless we all decide to stop paying taxes, which is not going to happen unless things get a whole lot worse.

Well, that leaves one last form of influence. As the old chant from the Vietnam protest era put it, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” The entire U.S. effort in Iraq, and everywhere else around the world, depends on a volunteer military — not just the officers from West Point and the Naval Academy, but everyone else in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and National Guard. There are, according to Wikipedia, currently 1.4 million men and women on active duty, with an additional 1.259 million personnel in various reserve components (including the Army and Air National Guard). Since the 140,000 military personnel in Iraq consist of both active-duty and reserve personnel, that means only about 5% of the “pool” of available personnel are currently there; but we’ve also got large numbers of military personnel in South Korea, Germany, Afghanistan, and numerous other countries, not to mention the support and infrastructure personnel that make it possible for the front-line troops to do their jobs.

So here’s the grassroots opportunity: if a significant number of the citizens of this country believe that the Iraq Study Group is essentially correct, and that troop withdrawals should begin by early 2008, then all they have to do is stop volunteering for military duty. Conversely, if a significant number of citizens believe that the Iraq Study Group is essentially wrong, and that we should continue providing as many soldiers as the politicians deem necessary, for as long as they deem necessary (53 years and counting, in the case of South Korea), then they should sign up in even greater numbers.

There are a couple of additional numbers you need to keep in mind, in order to put this in perspective. According to the Wikipedia article mentioned above, there were approximately 34,813,023 available men and women in the U.S., between the ages of 17-49, as of 2005. I have no idea whether this number is precisely correct (if you’re not going to trust politicians, there’s no reason you should implicitly trust everything in Wikipedia), but I’m willing to accept it as an approximate figure, at least on a provisional basis. What’s more interesting is Wikipedia’s estimate that as of 2005, approximately 4,180,074 men and women reached military age on an annual basis.

Keep in mind also that a certain number of enlisted military personnel and reservists become too old to serve each year; others finish their tour of duty and return to civilian life; and, sadly, still others die or are seriously wounded each year. Perhaps this helps explain the military’s recruiting goals: according to an article in about.com (whose accuracy, again, should only be accepted on a provisional basis), the Defense Department was looking for a total of 320,930 recruits in fiscal year 2006 (the article breaks this aggregate total into individual components for the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, etc., if you’re interested). The article further claims that “all services have met or exceeded their recruiting goals for fiscal 2006,” though I’ve seen various rumors and news articles (details of which I haven’t tracked down, and accuracy of which must again be accepted provisionally at best) indicating that the “success” was achieved at least partly through larger bonuses and lower standards.

Even if the military recruited its new personnel each year only from those individuals reaching the normal military age (you need parental permission at age 17, but presumably not at age 18), that would mean they only need to entice approximately 7.5% of the eligible pool of potential recruits; and obviously, the recruiters can continue going after the 19-, 20-, 21-year and older candidates indefinitely. Recent surveys and polls seem to indicate that roughly 60-70% of the overall American population is opposed to the Iraq war (see this page for recent polls on the subject), though I haven’t seen that broken down by age group. But if we assume, for the sake of discussion, that today’s youngsters have approximately the same attitude toward the war as their parents and grandparents, that means 60-70% are opposed — but 20-30% are in favor of the war, which means they are potentially “viable” candidates for the Army recruiters. Of course, there are likely to be some youngsters who say, “Well, intellectually and philosophically, I’m in favor of what we’re doing over there in Iraq. But at the moment, I have other priorities … so, thanks but no thanks: I won’t be enlisting” (they have, of course, a role model for such behavior, in the form of Dick Cheney). And, arguably, there might be some who are intellectually and philosophically opposed to the war, but nevertheless feel a duty to sign up — perhaps because their parents or siblings are already serving, or because of a deep sense of patriotism, or whatever.

In any case, the raw numbers suggest that the government will have little trouble finding sufficient quantities of young recruits to maintain current military operations in Iraq for the indefinite future. But notwithstanding the relatively optimistic assessment in the about.com article references above, there really have been a number of articles describing the military’s increasing difficulties in reaching its recruiting quotas; and there have been similar articles describing the extent to which the military is stretched thin, with several units serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq. Indeed, there is widespread consensus that while the military could add another 20,000 troops to the existing force in Iraq on a short-term basis, it would have trouble doing so on an ongoing basis; and the more drastic option (advocated by a few of our politicians) of adding 100,000 troops is widely regarded as entirely impracticable.

So perhaps things are a little closer to a tipping point than the raw numbers would suggest. And perhaps a concerted grass-roots effort to drastically reduce the number of military volunteers could force the politicians to stop waffling and pontificating, and actually do something. Of course, if the number of volunteers dropped to zero, the government could always withdraw large numbers of troops from other countries — e.g., pulling 50,000 troops out of South Koreas — but before that happens, not only pigs, but also elephants, will fly. Finally, the government could reinstate the draft, in which case we’d be back to a familiar scenario: Vietnam. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what would happen then…

Realistically, I don’t think any of this will happen — at least, not yet. But I really do think that events throughout the Middle East are taking on a momentum of their own, and with each passing day, the ability of the President and the entire U.S. government to directly influence the outcome of those events is decreasing noticeably. There are any number of events that could originate in any one of the Middle Eastern countries — that, too, I’ll leave to your imagination — that could cause the so-called tipping point, at which point grass-roots opinions really will begin to dominate events in this country. Whether it takes the form of the suggestions offered in this blog posting, I really don’t know. But I do think it will be driven by, and facilitated by, the Internet rather than politicians and the mainstream media. And that, I really do believe, is a very good thing.