Excuse me, but this "theon gravejoy" rationale is also the argument of Pétain's apologists : according to it, Pétain would have submitted to the nazi regime (its origin is geographically irrelevant here) in order to spare France the cost of a doomed-to-be-lost war, and, if he hadn't, France would simply have been occupied more brutally, after having paid the immense toll of a military defeat (in reality, this argument is weakened by the zeal with which the Vichy regime had endorsed the nazi ideology, but that's another story). He is still being condemned for this submission by the general population, but this only stresses the moral dilemma of that sort of situation. Submit to injustice (and, apart from Merkel and Schäuble, basically everybody concedes that 1° the debt is unpayable, 2° the austerity policies, as they had been imposed on Greece, were a catastrophic mistake - making the Merkel/Schäuble autistic insistance criminally unjust), or try to revolt against it, at the potential cost of failing and getting double punished. The latter happens to have happened, but this doesn't solve the moral dilemma itself.

And in front of such moral dilemmas, Greece has a history of having made the opposite choice from Pétain's government. One century after the state-founding revolt against the whole Ottoman empire, it has paid an absurd toll in one of Europe's most brutal popular resistance to the nazi occupation (including mass stick-and-stone versus machine gun battles in Athens' street). These historical episodes (along with the polytechnics revolt against the 1970s junta) are very much glorified in national history, meaning that discourses and attitudes are easily shaped by references to them and self-identification to historically past heroics. A submissive attitude is not the first choice you should expect in Greece, or should expect to be morally valorized.

I agree with Tsipras, when he mentions the mistake of having expected too much from Europe, even though he wasn't demanding that much : he was basically asking european leaders to take in account the admitted knowledge of austerity's practical consequences so far in Greece (knowledge with no corollary, apparently), and of the unsustainability of a debt that is still being used as a hypocritical leverage ("pay what we already know you cannot pay, or we kick your ass"). Pushing austerity even further, and maintaining the debt untouched, were an absurd and destructive course of action (as the IMF confirms by refusing to participate in such a "dead-end" strategy if it isn't made at least viable by debt restructuring). So, revolting, in the absolute, would have been the obvious "moral" choice. What made it less obvious (what had set me on the fence on this matter) was the expectable "sociopathic" response of the EU, from whom Tsipras naively expected more rationality : The fact that, indeed, the EU would, not only keep on the same "increasing austerity" path, but would even deliberately aggravate it out of rage in front of a member daring to question it democratically. The moral dilemma was about the high risk of double autistic injustice.

I think there are as many reasons to consider that an appeal to reason and democracy was worth trying, as to consider that it was obviously doomed from the start given the balance of power and the local moral priorities of the dominant states. But, exactly as with Pétain, most of those, in Greece, who were advising against this futile act of rebellion, were actually fully endorsing the austerity ideology and the dogmatic axioms that sustain it, and using the obsequious "you cannot go against the master, the master will punish you, am i right master ?" argument to prevent its questionning. From these people, referring to the morality of the "make or break" dilemma is hypocritical.

Risking EU's punishment was not an obvious "morally wrong choice", because seemingly futile acts of resistance (often defined as futile or fruitful in restrospect, often while overestimating the rationality of the lucky pronostic) can not be morally dimissed like that. However, such choices are often categorized as immoral by people who consider the demand itself as immoral anyway, regardless of the odds. And this has been very much the case in Greece these last months, just as it's been in many different historical situations.

And the same argument can be reversed : the austerity itself, as a bet on a "tough medecine" being worth its human cost, could have been a morally legitimate choice back then. Regardless of its failure. It was only pseudo-"immoral" in retrospect (although it had already some element of immorality for the way many of its supporters don't give a damn about these human costs in any case). It has however ceased to be moral nowadays, as its failure is more and more accepted, pushing its fanatical supporters further into "perseverare diabolicum" territory.

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Apart from that, http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/press-review/4956604-greece-might-no-longer-be-country-end-week ...