The sensational favorable turnaround of a certain policy and a certain press towards the armed forces is undoubtedly due to the coronavirus emergency, but it does however have a certain effect in an article published by a Sardinian newspaper traditionally critical of the military world and finding that the Government appeal "serve the army in the streets" is resumed without any critical comment. Now everyone is calling for army intervention: governors, mayors and party leaders. Bersaglieri, Alpine troops, Sassari brigade, paratroopers, everyone calls them, everyone wants them.
Not really all of them, because there are still those who (like the activists of "A foras", an organization of the local left that wants the military "Outside" from Sardinia) proclaim that "we have far too many soldiers on our island and more than fighting diseases, they brought them to us... ". These are characters who, equating the military with immigrants who are importers of diseases, pretend to forget both the judicial sentences and the medical-health investigations that falsify their theories and various national and international certificates that certify the exceptional longevity and psycho-physical efficiency of the populations living near the polygons.
However, it is even more effective to compare the current attitude towards the armed forces, and in particular towards the "Sassari" brigade, with that reserved just a month ago by the mayor of Villanovaforru to a proposal made by the "Sassari" commander "...in an attempt to give credit to his fellow citizens, forgotten veterans ... of the Second World War ... to bring closer and enhance the deeds of those who helped make this Great Unity Glorious ... and recover relationships with those who are still alive fought in the ranks of the Sassari Brigade ".
To the letter from the commander of the "Sassari" the mayor in question replied with a press release on the "YOU TG-NET" website defining the proposal "a pedantic and relentless manipulation made by the State on our consciences, in an attempt to create a myth that makes Sardinians more and more Sardinian but also Italian (sic) ... a letter, adorned with coats of arms and a star, which ends with a loud " Come on Paris! ".... I don't know what bothers me if all the capital letters used to indicate the Glorious, Great, Unity ... or the veiled attempt to pass the fascist war as any war" (sic). .. or the undue request to provide the personal data of my fellow villagers ... or the blatant search for institutional complicity. " So the final decision: “I have archived the letter: it will remain for me a precious example of what we must beware of. And I pray that more and more Sardinians will become aware of their own alterity with respect to the identity-like nonsense brought to us by Rome ".
Before going into the substance of this answer, a premise is appropriate: the mayor of Villanovaforru perhaps ignores that whoever can express the most severe of the judgments on the war, branding it as the worst of evils, is the soldier. And little changes for the military soldier who is sent to war by the politician on duty if a war is declared with the aim of affirming fascism or communism or independence from Austria-Hungary; for the soldier, the fact that he has to get involved and, in the worst case, die. The soldier doesn't care if the Clausewitz's statement "war is there prosecution of politics by other means "sounds like a high-sounding ambiguous justification or has a real foundation; for the soldier the war is simply the failure of politics, a failure for which he is not responsible but still called to pay the costs with the most precious currency: the risk of life. This is why, whether it is the first or second or, hopefully never, the third world war, the soldier must be respected, remembered and honored. Anytime, anywhere, anywhere.
Having overcome the disbelief or at least the perplexity in reading words spoken by a mayor who finds it consistent, after having sworn allegiance to the Italian Constitution, to take sides against that "Rome" which in addition to the "identity-like nonsense" also gives him a salary to make the mayor, I find it unacceptable that it is the mayor of Villanovaforru (who evidently counts on the fact that "everyone's attention is turned to the other", to put it in his own words that he should have turned first of all to himself) to have the last word on values that will survive all COVID 19 and the saparatisms of history.
I think it is right that to propose some reflections to the mayor's meditation is the Sardinian Nicolò Manca, who is not familiar with separatist nonsense, rather than the "continental" Andrea Di Stasio, who understandably cannot divert his attention from the preparation of the "Sassari "For the commitments that await it, whether it is out of area missions, or the fight against coronavirus, or Safe Roads.
1 ° In terms of independence and "administrative and political detachment from Rome" I do not think that the soldiers in general and those of the "Sassari" in particular think like the mayor of Villanovaforru. I also think that the maternal grandfather of the writer, Loddo Giovanni di Ortueri, and his brother Francesco, Fallen in the "Sassari" do not think like him (for the military all capital letters are not random but meditated). It may have a meaning to underline that "uncle Francesco" died in Monte Zebio on the same day and a few meters from the point where his brigade commander, General Eugenio Di Maria, also fell. I think however that many Sardinians do not think like the mayor of Villanovaforru ... even among his administrators.
2 ° For the soldier, war, before fascist or anything else, is only war.
3 ° What the mayor of Villanovaforru defines as "institutional complicity" for the soldier is called loyalty, and when a soldier dissent from this line leaves the uniform (which for a mayor should be equivalent to remitting the mandate).
4 ° To define the request of the personal data of the fellow citizens as undue means to want to keep them in oblivion ... unless the interested parties, when asked, have expressed their will in this regard.
5 ° Finally a suggestion for the mayor of Villanovaforru: apologize to the soldiers of yesterday and today, starting with those of the "Sassari", who felt offended by his statement, because they are aware that they are called as soon as a danger looms, whether it is war or terrorism or a natural disaster or a health emergency. Accustomed therefore to be available (as well as low cost as among the lowest paid in Europe) in the version of combat soldier, health worker or civil protection and, in the current emergency, also in the version monatto, as Manzoni would say if he saw the long columns of trucks loaded with corpses destined for incinerators from various regions of Italy. Trucks parading under silly signs that say "everything will be fine", despite everything is going damn badly.
But something tells me that, after the Buriana, a certain policy and a certain press will put aside the Hymn of Mameli and the good intentions dictated by fear, and they will start to consider the health, armed forces and security budgets non-priority, favoring the panem et circenses citizenship income and other donations, safe sources of votes; ensuring coverage of the pharaonic costs of national and European politics and of the financing of irregular immigration, as desired by the party, parish and camorra cooperatives.
In a corner of the soldier's heart, however, the faint hope survives that, having taken note of how Europe has blatantly revealed itself for what it is (who would have suspected that European brother states would have emulated Judah by "intercepting" the medical material donated to the Italy from distant friendly countries?), the Italians do not forget the Anthem of Mameli and the tragic lesson imparted by COVID 19.
Nicolò Manca (commander of the "Sassari" from '93 to '95)
Photo: Twitter
