The flip-side being “Just because you’ve met good people caught up in this” doesn’t negate the necessity of executing something.
Again, you guys can get mad as you want at the haphazard nature of the process, what has been absent is any suggestions beyond “dont do it this way” for better way forward. My dad works for the VA after retirement for the Air Force, he is probably one of the biggest proponents of doing something/anything to that agency and as much as he can’t stand the current admin this is a win for him.
Being so flippant about how things have been done belies your ignorance, yet again. Much of what has been done was literally spurred by nothing more than tweets by random folks on the internet. It is the worst way to do things, 'cause it ain't, but that is not the way to run any organization unless it is for pure entertainment. For government it makes no sense, whatsoever.
As for the absence of alternatives, I didn't realize from the tomes you've authored in this thread we needed to put some forth. But if you want an actual alternative perhaps the downsizing of the DoD the 90's, to include BRAC and a large reduction in federal civil servants among many other things, would be a useful guide of how to do it. Departments and agencies did significant planning where they identified parts of their workforce and capabilities that could be reduced in a largely coherent manner. While things were by no means perfect it was a deliberate, coordinated process that included input from the civilian and military leadership from the affected agencies as well as Congress and actually made sense big picture-wise. Want more details? Look 'em up.