Speaking Truth to Power

Thanks to fellow Southern liberal, Maria McGowen for pointing me to this brief blurb about the debt ceiling unnecessary and manufactured crisis from the Armed Forces Journal:-

To congressional Republicans for turning a medium-term problem into an immediate crisis by threatening to block efforts to raise the debt ceiling.

When a bloc of House lawmakers demanded spending cuts in return for the heretofore routine step of approving the repayment of America’s debts, they hijacked the country’s unblemished reputation as a borrower and wounded its international credibility. An 11th-hour compromise prevented economic disaster but could not ward off entirely unnecessary damage.

In a stroke, the lawmakers — mostly, but not entirely, GOP freshmen — showed world lenders, governments and publics that the U.S. government they help run is dysfunctional enough to point a loaded rifle at the country’s foot, if not quite foolish enough to pull the trigger.


Besides bringing the economic pain of lower credit ratings and stock prices, the debacle undercut U.S. military and diplomatic efforts to win trust around the globe. It injected more uncertainty into an economy and budget season already rife with it. It affected the morale of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who wondered whether their next paycheck would be an IOU.

It's a well-established perception that the military doesn't look too kindly on a Democrat in the Oval Office - or hasn't done so in forty years - and that they lean, more or less, in the Republican direction, or Rightish, shall we say?

However, kudos to the military brass for placing the blame squarely where it belongs in this instance - with the Republican Party and, specifically, with the novices who make up the Tea Party element on the Hill. If they have no idea of the damage they did to American integrity and the fiscal reputation of the nation, then they never will; and because of this, they are unfit to serve their constituents and should be booted out, come the next election.

Of course, the gist of this article was the fact that many armed forces personnel were, briefly, faced with the possibility that they might just have to be paid by IOU, as did many public servant in California not too long ago. (But, heyyyy ... as goes California ...)

The irony of this evaded possibility was that many of the young people in the military are poor and entered the service as a means of bettering themselves, through a technical or, eventually, an academic higher education. And many of them are actually from Congressional districts either represented by Republicans or their Tea Party tranche.

An even bigger irony, as Maria points out, is that whilst The Armed Forces Journal correctly recognises who was entirely and absolutely responsible for this manufactured bit of international shame, the media can't seem to get its collective head around it, and so we're fed the usual shitstorm litany of "Obama caved again."

I guess it really is easier to blame the black guy.