Why Do I Have to Do All the Thinking?

It really gets me that cops can turn off a stolen car remotely yet some rebels in Syria and Iraq can steal US tanks and other equipment and use them against folks we support.  Huh?  Is it that hard?  With all the money we spend you'd think our tanks might have locks and keys. 

I can't start my car without a little fod that I carry around.  My car cost $17,000.  What do you think a US tank costs?  I mean there is existing technology that will prevent a pistol or rifle from firing unless it recognizes the owner's finger. 

My son has a hi-tech keyfob that keeps hackers out of his online gaming account.  It cost five dollars.  Yup a whopping 500 pennys.

So here is my first solution to keep our tanks from being used by our enemies:

Just glue a Nissan Leaf on the tank and hook up the ignition.  Yeah it is silly but you get the point.

Then I thought of a simple solution of using a lojack. Yeah it would have to be military grade and all that and it would not be 100% but it could be made so much better than nothing.

How about a keypad on that tank that has to have a new string of numbers entered every so often?  Updating the tank's number would be easy for a tank under normal maintenance and even war.  Couple it with the mil-spec lojack and do that for every weapon and our stuff would quickly be useless for our enemies.

Do I have to think of everything?

President Obama's speech about ISIL last night

I wrote the stuff at the bottom soon after President Obama's speech on ISIL.  I was too hasty in my thinking so I want to revise it a bit.  I want to emphasize that I feel this will only work if powers in the region work together to figure this out.  We can't bomb a solution from the air and US boots in the mideast only cause trouble.  It is an extremely complex situation and there is no simple, fast, cheap solution.  The old product joke about picking any two from quality,  cost, and timeliness doesn't apply here.  We stepped in it in 2003 by allowing idiots to run our policy and we have to be really really careful (really!) in whatever we do.  This is not just a military problem and we need to look for much larger solutions. 

Bottom:
Thank you Mr. President!

I am 100% behind your strategy as I heard it last night:
    We provide supplies, intelligence, training.  No Americans in combat.
    The nations and groups that are directly affected in the area need to stand up and do the fighting.

You wisely ignore the people who got us into the Iraq mess and would dig us deeper.  It is an incredibly complex situation that they have shown they have no clue about. When the US is directly involved, we make it worse.

The people in the area need to decide their fate. We can influence them and help the side we want to win but it will ultimately be determined by the people in the Levant. 

 I pray that peace and respect are the result but it won't be easy or fast