Slowly Drawing Out The Knives?

I thought it was only me, but it seems people are noticing comments ala "who are we going to war with" bubbling up again into the public conciousness. Need the people be taught again that defence spending is like buying insurance, that buying insurance when the calamity is about to occur is practically useless, and definitely very expensive if anybody even offers it. Remember that ;

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
Winston Churchill

I present to you two comments that was recently published. Make your own conclusions.

"How many Super Hornets then? As Kamal had pointed out probably not more than 10.

And why are we talking about buying new planes when we cannot even properly fund the current fleet? My guess is as good as yours…."

–Malaysian Defence

"Last year, Singapore spent over US$1bil to upgrade its fighter aircraft. Can there be any doubt that Malaysia and others will soon want to upgrade as well?

It will not matter too much that we are still struggling to integrate all the advanced defence technology that we purchased the last time around or that these expensive warplanes have a tendency to end up in our padi fields.

Of course it would help if we had someone like Ahmadinejad in our region to help justify a new round of defence spending.

Perhaps a case could be made against those “imperious Chinese” who seem intent on turning the South China Sea into their own private lake. Or those “sneaky Singaporeans” who have been stealing our water for years and are now about to make off with the last bit of real estate we own on the island. Or even those “prickly Indonesians” who have taken to spitting on our flag and calling us names.

All these make good excuses.

No worries of a real war though because the US will, as always, have final operational control over all the weapons we buy. After all, these weapons are intended to advance American interests rather than our own.

It’s going to take every ounce of our national will to say no to more needless defence spending, especially when so much will be quietly promised to so few to just say yes."

> Datuk Dennis Ignatius is a 36-year veteran of the Malaysian foreign service. He served in London, Beijing and Washington and was ambassador to Chile and Argentina. He retired as High Commissioner to Canada in July 2008.