Current events require a critical revision of the Napoleonic maxim "The baton of a Marshal of France is hidden in every soldier's vest". Coming to the times and places of today's Italy it can be said that in those giberne "a less ambitious overalls, because that's the beauty of dual use, beauty! "
I believe that this was the reflection made by many Italians when they saw on the television screens the images of the army soldiers engaged in unloading single-seater school banquet trucks, as if one of those emergencies that require the intervention of the armed forces to be faced. . That this activity is called laboring or porterage hardly changes, because unskilled workers and porters deserve equal respect, but in seeing men in camouflage increasingly replace unskilled workers, porters, ecological workers, funeral directors, landfill guardians, field watchmen Roma and reception centers for illegal immigrants, it is inevitable that the man in the street asks himself: "But why not employ unskilled workers, porters, garbage collectors, funeral directors and the various security operators and, why not, also the unemployed earners of citizenship income or similar subsidies?"
The answer remains: this is the dual use, beauty, which also saves money.
It could be objected that the economic aspect, given that the urgency-emergency combination does not stand, cannot be brought up by a government that spends resources (which sound like an offense to the growing economic difficulties of many Italians) to face the effects of the rampant clandestine immigration on the national territory, up to, listen, listen, to make the aforementioned illegal immigrants pass the quarantine on luxurious cruise ships ("guests", according to the bureaucratic ministerial lexicon, "cruise passengers", according to the mocking and unscrupulous popular language).
A question therefore arises: what if the pillars of the sky were to collapse and a soldier with the mind and heart of one who is willing to die exclusively as a soldier and not a stopgap laborer is needed?
The political answer (but it would be interesting to know one also from the military side) is: in this case a dialogue is initiated to mediate with the opposing party and arrive at a shared solution bla-bla-bla in a climate of civil collaboration bla-bla-bla, and, where necessary, request the intervention of the armed forces of countries willing to help us… along the lines of what is more or less happening in the economic-financial field. But if it is not easy to find a usurer disguised as a lender, it is even more difficult to find an ally disguised as a friend: in the end it will always be the respective interests that dictate the law. So the perplexities remain.
If even some third world countries blackmail, mock and ignore Italy, even refusing to take back their fellow citizens, many of whom have returned from jail before joining the ranks of illegal immigration to Italy, how can we deny that at the basis of this state of affairs there is a dramatic lack of credibility of our armed forces and a total lack of political will to use them to defend national security and interests?
The suspicion that the formula dear to the pacifists of the old guard "armed forces for unarmed commitments" has been established is great, and there is no doubt that in the long run this ends up shattering the spirit of any soldier who has chosen to wear the uniform thinking not only to a job outlet but also to something more gratifying and spiritually motivated, not least the insulted defense of those "sacred borders" now violated by individuals of all sorts ferried by merchants of men and by smugglers, in a chain of which often paradoxically, the soldier himself ends up being the last involuntary link.
Therefore, excluding the possibility that the marshal's cane could be hidden in the soldier's vest, however, there remains the consolation that this is happening with increasing frequency in the non-military world. In fact, from the pouches of respectable citizen-soldiers, sticks of leading political marshals have sprung up: thus a very respectable disk jockey from the Extasi disco in Mazara del Vallo has become Minister of Grace and Justice; an equally respectable steward of the San Paolo stadium in Naples has become Minister of Foreign Affairs; a very respectable agricultural worker who, after completing compulsory schooling, is involved in the agro-food trade union sector, has become Minister of Agricultural-Food-Forestry Policy; an honest pet shop clerk, who also completed compulsory schooling, embarked on the political path and was a member of the Culture-Science-Education Commission, became President of the European Affairs Commission; a willing student who was challenged for some mediocre placements in teaching competitions as well as a goliardic accusation of "copying" in a thesis for teaching, became Minister for Public Education; a television actor from the “big brother” series has become a spokesperson for the Prime Minister. Without stirring further in the bags of the remaining governmental structure, the generalized lack of apprenticeship-study-experience that characterized these political exploits remains to be noted. The doubt remains that the dramatic situation in which Italy is sinking is due to the convictions of some picturesque Italian political Napoleon.
Moral: just as a soldier will never be able to hold the baton of a marshal of France if he does not have the stuff and if he does not fill his giberne with study and his apprenticeship of experience, the same can be said for thehomo politicicus e, mutatis mutandis, even for the marshals of France themselves, who if they show that they do not have the grit and the stuff to fill the role, should seek and rediscover the ancient camouflage of the soldier in their pouches.
What is certain is that to get out of this quagmire it is essential that Italians feel the urgency of radical changes that only a Napoleonic rescue can bring. The alternative is the end of Italy that we inherited from our fathers.
