"Reliant's prefix number is one six three zero nine." -- Spock, Star Trek II
Exactly! Star trek technology again. If you are going to use technology then look to where technology scenarios have been solved - even if it's only fiction. The ENTIRE division could have had a prefix code that disabled any number of functions.
prefix.all=disable
prefix.engine.all=disable
prefix.navigation.all=disable
prefix.weapons.all=disable
However America should not leave it's powerful weaponry for a third party to control. Iraq is completely demoralized they've just had the shit kicked out of them and their ideological enemy (Islam) has a knife to the throat of their children. It doesn't matter what weapons you give to someone who has no heart to fight and, when the enemy knows your families name and address they have you by the balls.
Islamic extremists have dominated the *psychology* of war constantly hitting at ideological weaknesses of the west, undermining our allies and using our own political shortsightedness against us to undermine western democracy - which they hate. Yet we have continued to make the same mistakes.
Over ten years ago our political representatives decided to lie to us (again) about compromising our values. They thought torturing and brutalizing people would be a good idea. However, long before 911 Islam was committing human right violations and we just didn't care. Now it all comes back to haunt us with new enemies, yet we are surprised when these psychos chop our citizens heads off. That's the price we pay for compromising our values. They don't have an ethical framework, we do. The answer is not to discard our ethical framework and become them - the answer is to strengthen our ethical framework and show the resolve of our mettle, not our metal. Our right *IS* might.
An old idea I've not heard in the news is "we are sending a crack team of diplomats" because the masses are too stupid to realize that hiding behind airstrikes and drones is cowardice, because the uneducated amongst us always think force is the right answer to every problem and because our Faux media insists on its shallow mindedness for ratings. We still haven't learned that Islamic extremism is using asymmetrical warfare against us to bleed us financially and worse, morally. Islamic extremism has effected a change in our entire way of life, and all we have done is radicalized them more because we turned from our ideals. This is not a path to victory.
Until the western world returns to the ideals that made us strong in the first place these extremists are going to continue to work a strangle game on us and slowly slowly slowly choke us. They hit us where WE think we are weak, but our ideals are our true strength because ideals can't be terrorized. When people of good character see the west sticking to its ideals *they* sympathize, when we don't *they* radicalize. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment ain't going to do what winning hearts and minds can do. Why can't we learn that? Why can't we take a step back and say, hang on a minute - what is really going on here?
Leaving tanks and destruction then saying "here are some guns, it's on you now" was never going to work. Taking responsibility for what we have done with our military and leaving schools, hospitals, training police, teachers will. Let ISIS or al-ki-assholes blow up the Iraqi people's new infrastructure and see how many friends they win.
That's the nice America that Islamic extremists can never defeat, no matter how many heads they take.
Ok people - rant over - sorry about that but I think it needed to be said.