RUTHFULLY YOURS

When a soldier falls, the withdrawal from missions is demanded. In truth, troops lack support

War is an easy topic: it is known to be unbearable, irrational, as it randomly and perversely hits. Our young man killed two days ago should have come home within the progressive disengagement plan expected for most of the NATO ISAF troops by January 2014. War is ugly, so the most natural instinct is to turn your shoulders to it especially when one of ours dies protecting not his home, his family, but a remote home and family, while senseless accusation of domination tower on him and his comrades-in-arms.

The instinct to leave gets as more compelling as the war is not going well, as it warps as opposed to your own plans. Which occurred to a great extent in Afghanistan: the Taliban are still an enemy to Karzai; he, at his turn, wouldn’t have held on without the decisive Western support. The ethnic and religious factions of this country are in great number against the Pashtuns who represent the central force with the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, the recipients of the NATO support. The Taliban, as April 5th nears, i.e. the date of the scheduled presidential elections, will rage clutching knives between their teeth and will bear good arguments due to the rulers’ corruption. Not to mention the appetites of Islamist and nuclear Pakistan, which is unrelentingly pushing on the border. Whereas Afghanistan, in NATO’s plans, should have been left in the best of the conditions in order to face its own future. Yet, all of this does not say much about this war.

The mission will leave from eight to thirteen thousand troops deployed. The outgoing troups doesn’t want to leave a cloud of dust behind them, but an invincible idea, i.e. the absolute interdiction to practice terrorism. The war fought in Afghanistan originates in the darkness of the burnt crater of Ground Zero, of the Pentagon hit, of a burnt field in Pennsylvania. After September 11, the world found itself embroiled in a defense war against terror. The intervention in Afghanistan through the operation Enduring Freedom, denied terror the right to possessing a huge background, to have an entire state ruled by the Taliban where Al Qaeda might have set its general staff.
This operation succeeded, terrorism did not spread out without boundaries in the United States nor in our continent; a consistent number of terror operations were thwarted, Bin Laden was eliminated, and so other commanders of his. Nowadays, although the Taliban did not disappear, we have at least a society which, thanks to our military, has the certainty that 28 NATO countries, along with another 22 countries which joined in, care to ensure its development, its freedom, its liberation for the relentless Islamist threat.
We should not decrease now the sense of the great dedication thanks to which 53 of our italian soldiers sacrificed their lives. It’s not fair at all to hint each time that it might have been better not being there. On the contrary, what comes to mind is that they did not enjoy what is essential during wars, i.e. a constant ideology support from their belonging societies, be it Obama’s United States or our Italy, where yesterday incidentally our government reacted with dignity, or France which withdrew its troops (it did deploy them in Libya and would like to send them to Syria), to constantly reiterate the profound meaning of NATO’s presence in Afghanistan.

While the war to terror shaped up, on the other hand the fear to accuse Jihadi terrorism gained the upper hand all over the map, together with the refusal to deal with Iran seeing it as it is, a stete behind most of international terrorism, to signal the risks related to the raise to power of the Muslim Brothers in many arab countries … In order to appease the future of Afghanistan and ensure the upcoming “Resolute support”, i.e. the mission which will stay, to realize the objectives of peace, progress, and democracy, the way is to change the current narrative into a more realistic nuance: we did not succeed all over, democracy did not prevail as per now, but war to terror, to the persecutors of women, of homosexuals, of dissents, of professional haters of the West was a great motive to intervene in Afghanistan. We’d better keep that in mind even in sad times.