Toward the end of World War II, my father served on the USS Kalk, a Navy destroyer on anti-submarine warfare and screening duty in the Pacific that steamed all the way into Tokyo Bay for the formal Japanese surrender in 1945.
One of his brothers was a Navy pilot who had two aircraft carriers sunk beneath him in the Pacific. Their younger brother was a waist gunner on a B-17 and flew 35 missions against Germany before the war ended. Miraculously, all three survived.
They have passed on now, and we honor them this Memorial Day, along with all the Americans and allied forces who didn’t make it home alive from that war — and others before and since, their memories symbolized by poppies growing in battlefields and graveyards like Flanders Fields.
But I am struck this Memorial Day holiday by how appalled they might feel now watching the internal war being waged by Americans back home on our democracy — the one they all fought to preserve.
I come from a family of Republicans, people who supported the projection of U.S. power abroad for the greater good; citizens who believed foreign policy disputes were healthy but had to stop at the water’s edge, for the sake of national unity; patriots who, despite our countries flaws, and there are plenty, unflinchingly supported America’s efforts to defend freedom and democracy around the world. They supported Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes.
This Memorial Day, I worry they might have been outraged to see the debacle unfolding in Washington, that put all those noble ideals at risk. I think of their sacrifice then, and compare that with the reckless, antigovernment, financial sabotage that today’s Republicans in Congress are threatening to unleash on the country and the world by holding the debt ceiling issue hostage if they don’t get what they want.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy R-Calif, claims he will not stop until a debt ceiling deal is done, but he is primarily responsible for putting at risk a Constitutional obligation not to question the nation’s debt. Congress agreed to spend the money, now they should pay our bills. Yes, there is a deal in principle, but extortion over the debt is not the way to get it.
Pressured by extreme MAGA members of his caucus, McCarthy and his ilk are now harming national security, risking economic catastrophe and damaging America’s creditworthiness for global investors with hypocritical demands for spending cuts. America should, indeed, find ways to curb spending, both sides agree. But the place for those talks is in budget negotiations, not holding the debt limit hostage.
The veiled threat is that the GOP-led Congress might refuse to raise the debt ceiling so America can pay its bills unless they get their way and President Joe Biden caves to their tactics. Republicans dutifully helped raise the debt ceiling three times under President Donald Trump, who added $7 trillion to the debt — a one-term record — and now they are worried about it?
Many veterans remembering the sacrifices made by their comrades for freedom might be horrified by this self-inflicted wound. If the U.S. defaults on its debt for the first time ever, experts say, that could lead to market sell-offs, plunging stock and 401(k) values, delayed payments for government programs, cuts in social services for the poor, an economy tipped into recession and the loss of 7.8 million U.S. jobs — along with financial crises abroad and U.S. shame.
Remembering our troops and those who fell, I think my Republican forebears might also feel betrayed. Biden had to cut short his recent trip abroad to the G7 and Quad meetings to come home and deal with the nihilists in Congress who seem to care little about U.S. financial stability as long as it hurts Democrats. They apparently could care less about America’s reputation, leadership and impact — even our reliability — on the world stage.
They take their cues from a twice-impeached former president who instigated an insurrection based on a big lie to overturn an election and stay in power; a politician who raised money off that Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his minions on the U.S. Capitol, when he couldn’t bear to lose; and a business owner recently indicted on a charge of criminal business fraud in one case and ordered to pay $5 million in another for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her. Trump even said he is alright with the U.S. defaulting on the debt if Biden doesn’t make “massive” spending cuts, a statement GOP senators disavowed.
But the betrayal goes beyond that. The U.S. under Biden has reenergized NATO, led the fight to defend democracy and arm Ukraine to fend off Russia’s unprovoked, criminal invasion, and stood up to despots in outcast Russia and a rising China. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the G7 industrial democracies recently, it was a sign the U.S. and its allies are standing united and firm against autocrats and dictators.
America is not perfect, but for better or worse, it remains the leader of a global alliance of democracies whose systems are threatened by the rise of autocracies and proto-fascists as never before. Dragging a president home early from that important work to deal with a made-up crisis that undermines U.S. stability is shameful for the Party of Lincoln.
My father, once a young Lt. Edward Rowley, who rode a destroyer across the Pacific in perilous times to defend freedom, might not recognize today’s America and those here bringing dishonor to the democracy he served like so many others. We pay our debts, full stop.
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As the beloved World War I poem reminds us each Memorial Day, we have an obligation to carry on the fight for freedom:
“If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
My dad was not a gunner but a paymaster (they called him “Pay”), and he was below decks paying out salaries to sailors on the Kalk anchored in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese signed their surrender aboard the USS Missouri. He did his duty. We should be doing ours.
Storer H. Rowley, a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the baiduhai, teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.
This story has been updated to reflect changes in the debt ceiling deal.
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