General Vannacci, as a good raider, knows that the best defense is attack, but he exaggerates in his response to my invitation published by the Giornale, about abandoning his uniform now that he has chosen the new battle in the European Parliament with half a million votes.
It wasn’t a bullet, but an appeal that I had already expressed to the general since the first interview in the Giornale, after the release of Il Mondo inverso, to give space to his voice, when everyone was competing to impale him with a firing squad political-media. And Salvini’s customs clearance had not yet arrived.
One more reason to understand that the appeal to hang up the uniform is not part of any Psyop operation or conspiracy, but is only an opinion, an invitation, to be submitted to the interested party, readers and public opinion. A question that cannot remain “personal”, after the Vannacci case and his entry into the field.
Honestly, reading in the reply that I would have done it out of “complacency, front row seats, embedded reporting with Task Force 45” doesn’t make me angry, but it does make me smile. Everyone knows that I am the least complacent and most annoying journalist for the Defense “system” because I always want to go to the front line reporting on our missions without politically correct pretenses. Legend has it that when I call the General Staff, fear and annoyance mix in the question “and now what do you want?”. Usually my 40 years of war reporting is enough to get a defense hearing. And if they aren’t enough I raise hell, as happened with the last report on the Caio Duilio in the Red Sea, an embarkation forced after months of tug-of-war.
As a Giuliano, I always didn’t care and I would never have accepted “bigot conformism” or straightening someone’s hair, and if they had asked me to launch the appeal for dismissal, even if I agreed with it, I would never have done so, much less in public. . To the point that I asked for details on leave and discharge from a senior officer no longer in service, who knows Vannacci well and agrees with him not to give up his uniform.
I am simply convinced that the Armed Forces must always be protected and preserved in their third party nature, never dragged even by mistake or in an instrumental manner into partisan squabbles. For this reason, General Vannacci, who has now legitimately become a politician in effective permanent service, should take his leave without taking advantage of his leave of absence as any journalist who denigrated him has done.
It is not a question of constitutional rights or economic calculation (Vannacci is already a millionaire with the sale of the World in reverse), but of doing the right and appropriate thing for the Armed Forces, in my humble opinion. And perhaps avoid spite and the pleasure of getting pebbles out of your shoes towards those who would like to see the general dragged in chains to Gaeta.
Even more so, after the publication of the invitation to hang up the uniform, messages of sharing arrived from senior officers on and off duty – certainly not fogeys or ambushes – but also from soldiers of every order and rank as well as people municipality, who in several cases voted for Vannacci. And they would like him to have a free hand in politics, without risking repercussions on the Armed Forces, while continuing to call him “general” or “commander”. Others, but honestly a minority, disagree and want him to stay with the stars.
The decision lies with the raider of the Reverse World, who will always remain so.
And precisely on 16 June, 106 years after the assault of the daring who defeated the Austrians on Col Moschin, during the battle of the Solstice, giving its name to the glorious 9th regiment, where Vannacci comes from, I would have preferred the general to break the mold “not caring” about expectations, just recriminations, resentments. And he announced the decision to hang up his uniform for the same Armed Forces, which he served with courage and honor.
