"History—nor even current events—is made with “ifs.” But it is legitimate to speculate on what might have happened if the Red Brigades, instead of obeying the lust for destruction and death—the very lust that led a militant to dream of the advent of a Pol Pot-style regime, with a massive and salvific bloodbath—had freed Moro: that Moro who had showered his party friends with accusations and recriminations, who had renounced the Christian Democrats, who would have reemerged from the catacomb-like seclusion of Via Montalcini brimming with resentment and eager for cold, calculated revenge. For the Christian Democrats, his presence would have been disruptive, if not devastating. The martyr who had escaped death could have become—as his wife and children would eventually become—the worst enemy of the Christian Democratic Nomenklatura. Forget Cossiga (the Cossiga of 1991, to be clear)."