Actually, the insanity is not possible to quantify. An abundance of social and political indicators break the meter.
The fact that there is no effective border of the United States is insane. The fact that 82 members of the Democratic Party have signed onto a House Resolution against free speech about Islam is insane. The fact that the United States still has troops risking -- and losing -- their lives in Afghanistan for the tag end of a bankrupt Bush-Obama political agenda is insane. On this eve of Christmas, with six grieving American families having just met their war dead returned from Afghanistan yesterday, it is also cruel and crying out for redress.
The insanity doesn't end in the "advisory" mission in Afghanistan now being carried out by some 10,000 Americans. Think about what the six Americans we have lost -- four of whom were members of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which responsible for civil and criminal investigations for the Air Force -- were ordered to do while on this "advisory" mission.
They were on a "security patrol" around Bagram Air Base.
How "advisory" is that? Is that an appropriate use of Air Force special investigators? Why aren't Afghan soldiers on security patrol? Perhaps it's because we still can't trust them?
Continuing to "partner" with Afghanistan, then, is insane, too.
From CNN:
A senior U.S. military official told CNN it is not unusual for such personnel to undertake security patrols.
The patrol had been sent out to talk to local Afghans outside Bagram in part because there are several villages so close to the base, a major area for U.S. military operations.
The patrols are also conducted so U.S. personnel can gather intelligence to keep rockets and mortars from being fired at the base.
Sounds like the fast-food version of all those years of goat-eating-tea-drinking-COIN-to-win-those-Muslim-hearts-and-minds all over again, but this time around the desperation is palpable in that the rockets and mortars Americans are trying to talk locals out of protecting with silence, or firing themselves are not coming into some far-flung forward operating base or camp, but into Bagram, the main base for Americans in Afghanistan.
When does this end?