Those awkward questions from Galli della Loggia on Afghanistan, the West and death
The Scratches of Damato
The emblematic photo of the conclusion of the Italian mission in Afghanistan in the context of the western contingent in withdrawal after twenty years of occupation has rightly landed on the front pages of the major newspapers. It is the photo of the interior of the last cargo of our armed forces that left Kabul, crowded with Afghan civilians – who hopefully do not regret having entrusted themselves to our protection, given the mess that the bureaucracy and its surroundings are used to do in managing. also of this type of immigration – and of the military and civilian personnel of Italy. Among which we note, with a tired but relieved face, the consul Tommaso Claudi already distinguished himself in recent days with those photos that had surprised him collecting children raised with their arms towards him by terrified parents, not yet sure of being able to save themselves.
In an admittedly final reportage from Kabul that seems to me to be written more in the editorial office, Il Foglio spoke of an Italian military operation "perfect in an American disaster", which one would be tempted to share seeing another image: that of the President of the States United Joe Biden in tears at the White House talking about the latest losses inflicted in chronological order on the American military by ISIS terrorists, not even happy with the return of the Taliban to power in those lands soaked in sand and blood. In which Biden himself is well aware that at least 250,000 Afghans have been unable to offer the aid they claimed in his country to escape in time from a scenario that they believe is hopeless: a time that perhaps they would have had if the management of the withdrawal of the troops had been different from the White House and environs.
Yet in this easy and recurring temptation to take it out on Biden, although fueled in recent days by an expert on American and world affairs such as the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, there is something that more and more does not return. . And that helps us today to understand, between questions and analyzes, reading it in the Corriere della Sera , not a general, not a politician but simply an intellectual, a historian, a university professor like Ernesto Galli della Loggia. Rather than asking himself, like others, whether it is right or not to try to export democracy where it does not exist, or is too distant and different from the models suited to our culture, traditions, habits and so on, he wondered if the " our "society, understood as the Western one we think we belong to, is truly equipped to carry out a similar, ideologized and ideologizing mission.
Ernesto Galli della Loggia's answer is mercilessly negative. We miss what the Corriere della Sera columnist calls "a so-called voluntary dimension of death", which instead is present in the terrorists and feeds their fanaticism and danger: as single as that of the kamikaze he has just provoked in Kabul. 90, as was initially thought, but more than 170 dead, but also collective, or community.
According to Galli della Loggia, it is also to make up for this lack of willingness to die for noble purposes in our society that the very nature of the armies we employ has changed, made up of real soldiers, serving the flag of the State from which they depend, but also on “mercenaries”, on external “contractors”, supplied by private individuals. Which the Americans in Afghanistan have used in abundance, and which have contributed more than half to the death toll.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/quelle-domande-scomode-di-galli-della-loggia-su-afghanistan-occidente-e-morte/ on Sat, 28 Aug 2021 06:12:21 +0000.