I vividly recall walking through the corridors of Saddam Hussein’s palace in the Green Zone in Baghdad in 2006. I was there as part of a team helping to develop a strategy to reinvigorate Iraqi businesses that had been decimated by war and the dysfunction of Iraq’s state-run economy. The palace had been occupied and renamed the temporary U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The wide corridors and ornate offices were occupied by U.S. government employees and military personnel.
As I walked down one of the corridors, I came across a startling sight. Adorning the wall outside an office door was an official photograph of a U.S. State Department official. Above the photo was this inscription: “Welcome to U.S. Embassy Baghdad, our new Embassy Diversity Officer.” The incongruence of what was happening outside the Green Zone with what was happening inside it was depressing — insurgents were attacking and killing U.S. service members and civilian aid workers on a daily basis — yet enlightening. In that moment, I thought, we may fail to bring peace and stability to Iraq, but we haven’t failed in planting our bloated bureaucracy right in the heart of it.
Recently, many have been buoyed by the appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead something named the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). The name immediately recalls the Monty Python sketch about “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” The promise of an empowered set of fresh eyes, taking a hard look at waste and inefficiency in our federal government is certainly something we should all cheer.
But as a two-time veteran of such efforts during the Bush 43 and Trump 45 administrations, I offer this unsolicited advice to Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy: don’t create the DOGE!
Creating a new federal government agency to facilitate this effort is a waste of time and will be counterproductive to the mission that must be performed. All that is needed is a small team of highly motivated and smart people who are used to doing things at the pace at which the world is changing — not the pace at which government moves. No offices, no H.R. department, no financial management system or ERP, no department logo, no........