Benjamin Wittes has written a scathing piece at his national security site entitled, "The Debt Ceiling as a National Security Issue." In it, he makes the case that Congress is more of a threat to U.S. national security than Al Qaeda, Iran and North Korea.
It's a similar argument I made recently, in which I characterized House Tea Party members' willingness to leverage damage to the U.S. as political terrorism and jihadism.
Here's Wittes (with emphasis mine):
If a body other than the Congress of the United States were actively contemplating a step that would, by the accounts of virtually all economists, tank the U.S. economy, cause interest rates to shoot up, and trigger a financial crisis, we would talk about that body as threat to national security.
[...]
Yet for some reason, when Congress flirts with flushing this asset down the toilet, with giving it away for no discernible reason and getting nothing in exchange for it, we do not tend to discuss this in national security terms. Congress may suffer in public opinion polls, as it has done. But we don’t tend to talk about Congress as—at this stage—what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.
There is no chance that tomorrow Al Qaeda will cause this country to default on its debt. Nor is there any chance that Iran will or that North Korea will or that any foreign adversary will. Nor can any of these entities hope to inflict one gazillionth of the damage such an event would entail. There is, however, a considerable chance that Congress will launch such an attack—which, of course, we won’t speak of in those terms.
Indeed, House Republicans have been plotting, and are now carrying out, a serious attack against the U.S. economy. An attack they appear to be willing to carry out if their demands are not met. If they do not get what they want. If the United States does not look exactly as they think it should.
Now which world entity is more threatening to U.S. security?
Wittes is correct: those who represent many of us – those who are tasked with safeguarding U.S. interests and protecting the interests of those they serve – are currently the most dangerous entity we as a country face.
The fact that such a statement is not bombastic, but accurate, is unspeakable. There's a reason polls show a gigantic increase in Americans saying, "Fire all of Congress."
It's because they recognize the House as the enemy.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, just out from Oneworld Publications.