Letter: Do we need the weapons?

I refer to an article on page 3 of Saturday’s The Jakarta Post titled “Government to seal arms deal”.

Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said: “We will buy a main battle tank.” Thank God our visionary leaders are not asleep at the switch!

We trust that Purnomo did not mean only one main battle tank — the Indonesian Military (TNI) must have hundreds of them to fend off such well-documented threats to Indonesia.  

Also, it would be sensible for the government to look into the possibility of acquiring battleships from the US and Europe, B1 bombers from the US, and nuclear weapons from North Korea to deal with such threats.

There are those who would say that such threats are imaginary, that asymmetric warfare is what Indonesia must be equipped to meet and that main battle tanks are not what Indonesia needs to deal with violence carried out in the name of religion, to eliminate poverty, to stop terrorists and to wipe out corruption.  

We say “nonsense”; the military is the answer to everything!

Will Jourdin
Ubud, Bali