Was this humiliation of Greeks really necessary?

``Almost everyone I know now fears that Greece will be left to rot in the eurozone... It will take years -- decades perhaps -- for Greeks to get over this crisis. Catastrophe may have been averted, but it comes at the expense of conscious national failure: an overriding recognition that the state formed after the fall of military rule provided 40 years of peace and stability, but has ended in extraordinary ignominy. The promise of unending progress did not occur.''