"Thats enough!". Perhaps because this exclamation recalls the image of a parent exasperated by the conduct of a child impatient with good manners, it is not a formula that befits the democratic dialogue. However, when the management of public affairs exceeds a certain level of guarding, this cry, irreplaceable in its peremptory intransigence, breaks out from the bowels of anyone who comes across something deemed unacceptable. It is unacceptable that the contents of the circular with which the Special Defense Administrations Office recently put in black and white of not being able to pay, following the judicial foreclosure of some current accounts, the funds for emoluments to personnel in service abroad, appears unacceptable. for detachments and expenses connected to the XNUMXth financial report and finally for advances and settlement of missions.
These measures, daughters of the arrears of the Defense in the payment (hear, hear!) Of the bills of water-light-gas-garbage, reveal that the armed forces fund their availability to guarantee the minimum-indispensable operability to ensure, to put it with the words used by Minister Guerini in the excellent interview with Corriere della Sera on 14 February, "Advanced defense functional to internal security"in other words, to honor international commitments (Italy is the second country in the world by number of soldiers employed in the so-called peacekeeping missions) and to contribute to internal security (7000 men engaged in "safe roads" only). However, having accomplished these tasks, there is no money left for the bills and therefore, as happens in poor families, the taps are closed or, in the case in question, those of some amounts due to the staff.
The proposal of the man in the street is understandable: "save in other sectors and pay the bills", which is followed by the inevitable pressing question: where to cut? In the already lacking maintenance of the vehicles? In the renewal of obsolete equipment and weapon systems? In the reduced number of flight and navigation hours of aircraft and boats? In postponing the renovation of barracks dating back to the last century to the Greek calends (see the study "green barracks")? Or in philosophizing around the revaluation, along the lines of the 35 euros / day arranged by the minister Lamorgese for the provision of irregular migrants, the allowance of 27 euros / day provided for the soldiers engaged away from the family in the "safe roads"?
It is a long list that has its roots in that floating 1% that Italy allocates to Defense, against the 2% supported and urged by other NATO members. In other words, the Italian Defense blanket is so short that it does not allow to pay the bills in question but also to relegate Italy, which is part of the group of the ten largest economic and industrial powers on the planet, among the countries of least international prestige. The essence of the problem is all here and there is no point in going around it, as Minister Guerini also did in the aforementioned interview.
This state of affairs would make it necessary for someone, first of all the supreme commander of the Armed Forces, to shout "enough is enough", or at least whisper it or at least he thought it. After all, it would only be a matter of following in the footsteps of those who translated this cry of pain into a provocative one "Better to abolish armed forces so unreliable because they are under-funded", as a head of SMD did at the time, General Santini, General Corcione also in the role of Minister of Defense and some heads of SME such as Generals Canino and Incisa di Camerana. The latter made the proposal in an extremely abrupt tone to Minister Previti on June 7, 1994 in the "Gonzaga" barracks in Sassari (it was the time of the contraction of the army to 13 brigades and the suppression of the "Sassari" was at stake), witnesses Senator Campus, Mr Pisanu and the writer, known to the higher authorities for having been the undisciplined precursor of the proposal in question, having repeatedly formulated it in various national newspapers (among which the newspaper of 11 June and 16 October 1989) ).
It must therefore be admitted that the three state powers' approach to the defense problem has not changed, on the contrary, given the foreclosures at stake, it has worsened.
Certainly the military were surprised by such a striking judicial measure adopted by the judiciary, a measure that is difficult to imagine applied, for example, on current accounts intended to finance the reception of the re-thriving irregular immigration or to ensure the coverage of the income of citizenship. And this despite the fact that the judiciary is well aware of the widespread illegality to which the citizenship income acts as a shield - tax evasion deriving from the palatability of illegal work and criminal activities - as well as the aspects related to safety and public health deriving from the landings from NGO boats of Africans of unknown identity and origin.
It leaves us perplexed to compare the sanitary cordon that at the airports filters the flow of passengers coming from highly armored European capitals with the procedure, to say the least, elastic and permissive with which migrants from the African continent are welcomed and managed where, among other things, it records a massive Chinese presence gravitating around energy and mining interests. Inevitable running with the thought to the triangulation China-Africa-Italian safe harbor that recalls immediate health implications in which the coronavirus represents an added value to other diseases that have already reappeared in our country following irregular immigration.
Moral: the armed forces continue to face difficult times in which the political debate will continue to be indifferent to the defense budgets, while between a goodist appeal and the other launched by the majority of the parties and the Vatican, the military will have to, between a mission in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the dozen operating theaters around the world, continue to fight against water-light-gas-garbage bills.
A good reason why whole Italy should shout "enough is enough".
Read also (2018!): "Doesn't Defense pay the bills?"
Photo: Ministry of Defense / Quirinale
