When a large corporation decides that an unsaleable subsidiary business’s operations are no longer serving its interests, it folds up shop. It cherry-picks the best people and redeploys them elsewhere, and then it cuts costs by eliminating all other now-unnecessary expenses, including departments and personnel. This is what we, the shareholders of the United States, have asked the management team installed as the Obama administration to do, with regard to the occupation of Iraq; we want them to close up shop and stop spending money related to the war’s operations.

And yet certain elements of the Department of Defense and the Department of State are doing everything they can to sustain or inflate costs through continued operations.

In short, these interests are so determined to save their own jobs they will ignore the will of the people. They will actually go so far as to ask for the creation of a mega-department at cabinet level to preserve their jobs, making a boondoggle so unwieldy it practically invites abuse.

It’s no surprise; this often happens within large corporations winding down a subsidiary operation. There will be considerable pressure within the targeted subsidiary to try and save jobs. Been there, done that, have seen this up close as a corporate drone caught up in a spin-off and as a project manager winding on other businesses’ spin-offs. One can empathize with the pain of losing their job and identity, but eventually reality sets in.

There’s no way to justify keeping the jobs for a business that no longer exists. There’s no sane rationale for inflating overhead costs to other operations for no real improvement in other operations, while increasing risk to the parent organization.

But this is exactly what the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Scott Bowen is trying to do, now that operations in Iraq are winding down. Bowen submitted a proposal yesterday which recommends creation of

a single agency, which he analogizes to an “international FEMA,” ought to be the single civilian point-of-contact with the military if the United States is to avoid future wartime coordination fiascoes. He calls it, in typical Washington acronym-ese, USOCO –the U.S. Office for Contingency Operations.

Further, sources say that Bowen’s 27-page proposal advocates for a single point-of-contact which serves both Department of Defense and the Department of State, co-mingling the resources to carry out the separate and sometimes divergent missions of these two departments. The entity would suck up the roles of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, retain most if not all of the personnel from SIGIR, while spreading its tentacles into all contracts issued by DOD and DOS — perhaps even contracts issued by the Department of Interior.

Can you imagine what someone like a former Fourth-Branch vice president might do with an entity like this?

And don’t let the label, "international FEMA," make this all warm and fuzzy for you, conjuring up images of storm-tossed people being rescued. The proposal actually spells out the creation of something more like the Department of Homeland Security under which the actual FEMA operates; Bowen wants a new entity with reach as expansive as DHS.

And we all know what happened with DHS, from mucking up emergency response to inveigling itself into citizens’ privacy. Add a health splash of "economic hit men" and stir well…

Oh, but there’s no way that the Obama administration would ever sign on to a new, super-sized DHS-like entity, you may be saying to yourself.

Except that an entity like this would solve the conflict over additional troop deployments to Afghanistan, might it not? Instead of sending troops and pissing off the base, the Obama administration would simply announce it was ceasing all combat operations in Afghanistan except those necessary to protect the mission of a reconstruction effort operated out of this new office. All kinds of armed contractors (read: Xe, Halliburton, so on) could be deployed into the field instead of troops.

And with the DOS also jockeying for money, control and jobs during the Iraq downsizing process, DOS would likely sign on and support the creation of such an entity in order to assure their own slice of the pie. DOD, DOS and the Obama administration might well grasp at this as their "third way," a blessing which eliminates an escalation in name only while giving the right-wing hawks something to chew on as their military-industrial complex donors sigh with relief over new opportunities to contract with the U.S. government.

But how the hell does oversight work for an entity this size with a mission this fuzzy? Can you see how special operations programs of a covert or clandestine nature would be operated out of this entity, with oversight limited to overall budget like the DOD?

How does a new cabinet-level entity really solve the fundamental problems of the Afghanistan war and Pakistan’s risks? A new organizational structure merely shuffles the head count while offering administration officials an opportunity to pat each other on the back for avoiding an escalation with tens of thousands of troops deployed to the region. It does not solve the problems of a factionalized nation-state whose economy relies far too heavily on production and sales of illegal narcotics, nor the instability within a nuclear-weaponed neighbor.

Frankly, the U.S. has lost so much credibility that real solutions to the underlying problems may not be anything we can provide. They may need to come from our global partners, specifically moderate Islamic countries who are able to transcend the cultural divides.

Scott Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, said,

“It’s about economy, efficiency and effectiveness,” she said. “Every day we sit here, millions of dollars continue to go in these operations, and the outcomes become more critical. Are doing this most effectve way? The body of work SIGIR produced clearly says we’re not doing it in the best, most efficient way.”

Exactly, girlfriend. Which is why the folks at SIGIR need to start looking for other employment and not create a boondoggle. Surely some corporation out there could use your valuable insights on efficiency and effectiveness.