As my collegue and friend Tom Robey noted in todays PI:

Science emerged as the antidote for America’s shortcomings. Policymakers jumped to talk about science and, more important, to fund it: President Eisenhower established the position of Presidential Science Adviser; the House and Senate incorporated scientific review into their committee structures; Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Agency; and lawmakers quadrupled funding for the National Science Foundation. Most people agreed we needed to improve education to draw more young Americans into science and engineering.

In no small way, these decisions made America what it is today: the leader in technology, finance, medicine and economics. Prior to this push, science was largely a career for the wealthy, or patrons of the wealthy. By putting the full weight of the public coffers and general will behind research and academics, we became the first real scientific society and changed the course of the planet as a result.

How do today’s Republicans respond to our challenges–climate change, energy crunches, airline-transmitted pandemic illness, a world filled with hungry, bored and girlfriend-less teenage boys to name a few?

The office of the Science Adviser to the President has been moved out of the White House; the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment was disbanded in 1995 after the Republican sweep of Congress; NASA has an image problem; science allocations lag behind inflation stifling innovation; and while more Americans than other nationalities win Nobel Prizes, those accolades go to scientists trained in a different era — the uncertain funding situation facing young scholars today is an impediment to many pursuing careers in science.

Even as a young scientist, coming to the end of my PhD training, I can’t easily recommend it as a path for younger students. The ever-tightening NIH budgets are only the start of troubles for a young American interested in science. Classrooms are under assault from throwback religious zealots; the President actively derides intellectualism, curiosity and scientific pursuits from the bully pulpit.

When I think of the alternative careers I selected against–the NSA, biotech, financial services, software engineering–and the challenges facing me as I become an American scientist, I feel like an anachronism. Thankfully I live in Seattle, an island of the earlier spirit in a sea of reactionary fear.

I’m here. You’re here. And I’m happy for that.

The pieces the documentary presents are nothing new: A rush to war, minimal plans for the aftermath, too few troops, no martial law, looting, imperial rule, de-Ba’athification, disbanding of the Iraqi military, the construction of the Green Zone, and the bombing of the UN compound.

I was never fond of this war. It’s one thing to engage in an imperial war for conquest — could you honestly expect something else from Bush and Co? — but to be grossly incompetent while doing so is shocking. As an American, it’s easy to take for granted the competence of the many (many MANY) civil servants implementing good and bad policies. Few other civilizations in history have been as competent as ours; organization is our real strength, far beyond our military power. Where were all the capable people during the Iraq war (and later in the aftermath of Katrina)?

No End in Sight is at its most insightful when showing that everyone — the soldiers, the American public, the Iraqi citizens and even the Iraqi military — were anticipating, expecting, and demanding American competence. The initial exuberance of the Iraqi public after the invasion was almost entirely from anticipating the well developed plans for stabilizing and rebuilding the country; the Iraqi military could not wait to receive carefully crafted orders. The US government took two years to plan the eventual occupation of Germany; the planning for Iraq started sixty days before the invasion.

Even with terribly short time frame, little staff, few Arabic speakers and a next to impossible task, the plans came. Enact martial law to prevent looting. Quickly involve the former Iraqi military to help out the (too few) troops used for the invasion. Reach out to community groups to start some grass-roots democratization. Quickly rehire the technocrat Ba’athists to keep the country running. And so on. As one of the leaders of this group stated, there are five hundred ways to do an occupation wrong, and only two or three to do it right

What happened was the tragedy. The competent people, the serious people, the interested people were ignored, overridden, replaced or fired. Fresh college graduates — with impeccable political credentials but little else — were put in charge. Ridiculous edicts were enforced from above. What followed was inevitable.

So today, the four years after the UN compound was bombed, let’s think of all the brave, the smart, the hardworking and the ignored civil servants who attempted to save us.