And that is another matter. These people have no grand plan, they are just stupid. Its the old bureaucratic degeneracy of preferring internal goals vs the purpose of the institution.
Its extremely common. When top management signals that THEIR goals are something stupid, the institution adopts these goals without resistance. The personal priority of everyone is to get promoted by pleasing their betters, no matter how this hurts the institution.
And nobody will ever admit to screwing up.
Yup—then when you add in affirmative action and wokeness the large institutions go from being stupid to just silly.
The US .Gov is way over their heads in the complexities of the Middle East.
Anything they touch is just going to make things worse.