A Not-So-Brief Briefing on The Anti-LGBT Plots of June 12

The basic facts of the horrific massacre in Orlando have been explained by many people before me, so I will be skipping over most of that information.  This post will focus instead on the things that I think are important to bear in mind as an informed citizen when thinking about or commenting on the tragic events of this Sunday.

1. We came dangerously close to another mass killing at an LGBT event in Los Angeles.  A man named James Wesley Howell of Indiana was arrested early Sunday morning after being reported as a “prowler” by a someone in the neighborhood where his car was sitting.  A search of his car turned up “three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket with chemicals that could be used to create an explosive device,” according to local law enforcement quoted by CNN.  There are conflicting reports about whether he explicitly stated a desire during his arrest to attack the LA Pride festival.  Early reports said he made such statements during his arrest, but this claim has been walked back by law enforcement.  He did make clear, however, that he was going to the LA Pride event.  
   
   This should make clear to everyone that no demographic has a monopoly on terrorism, or even just homophobic terrorism.  We could very easily have been looking at a totally flipped scenario whereby the Orlando assailant was stopped and the LA assailant managed to kill dozens of people.  
   
2. The Orlando shooter publicly declared his allegiance to the so-called Islamic State in a 911 call mere moments before beginning the massacre.  This declaration, called bayat, is how one attaches oneself to the ISIS cause and is required for ISIS support.  ISIS ideology holds that because Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the current leader of ISIS) declared a Caliphate with himself as Caliph in the ISIS-occupied lands of Syria and Iraq, all “true” Muslims are required to swear allegiance to the ISIS Caliphate, as dictated by certain prophecies in Islamic holy texts.  For an excellent explanation of ISIS ideology and how one attaches themselves to the ISIS mission, please read Graeme Wood’s outstanding March 2015 report in The Atlantic, What ISIS Really Wants. It is a long read, but it is essential to really understanding what ISIS and their adherents are trying to do and how they are trying to do it.
   
   The fact that the Orlando made bayat just before carrying out the massacre tells us that this was the first formal connection he had ever made with ISIS.  Unlike al-Qaeda, which was happy to essentially franchise out their terror operations to sympathizers around the world, ISIS requires that one make bayat in order to be recognized by them as a true Muslim and as a legitimate participant in ISIS’ jihad.  This formal affiliation between the shooter and ISIS lasted, at most, for a few hours before the shooter was shot and killed by police.
   
   ISIS, through their media outlets, has been more than happy to claim responsibility for the Orlando massacre.  The Amaq news agency and al-Bayan radio station, both official ISIS outlets, issued statements celebrating the massacre and claiming credit for it.  It is interesting to note how the al-Bayan station’s report said “Allah has enabled brother Omar Mateen, one of the soldiers of the Caliphate in America, to carry out a raid where he was able to infiltrate a Crusaders' gathering at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida.”  
   
   There are several important things to draw from the language of this statement.  First, it claims Mateen as a “brother” of ISIS, indicating an official attachment between ISIS and the shooter.  This means that ISIS has recognized his pledge of allegiance to the Caliphate and, by doing so, is trying to claim ownership of his deeds.  However, we should also note how the statement says ‘Allah enabled’ the shooter to carry out the massacre, putting the agency for the act on the shooter and Allah, but not on ISIS.  If ISIS had any actual involvement in this act, they would have claimed as such very explicitly.  Instead, we can see that ISIS can only claim responsibility for the ideology and inspiration of this attack, rather than any sort of active participation.  This act was planned and carried out by the assailant and the assailant alone.
   
   It’s also worth noting how ISIS portrays the victims of the attack as “Crusaders” (and “filthy Crusaders” in the sentence following the quote).  The homophobia of this attack is actually relatively understated by ISIS.  I read this as an indication that ISIS sees this massacre not necessarily as an anti-gay attack in itself, but rather as an attack on something that symbolizes what they abhor in the West and what they wish to destroy--the open, free, proud expression of non-heteronormative sexuality and indulgence in carefree fun and debauchery.  
   
   This suggests to me that future ISIS-inspired attacks are likely to be directed against other symbols of what ISIS views as most evil, disgusting, and outrageous in the West--perhaps symbols of our consumerism, traditions of proud religious expression and religious plurality, and propagators of ‘blasphemy,’ immodesty, and other ‘impiety.’
   
3. This attack is very different from the ones in Paris and Brussels in several important respects.  It is important to note that the Orlando shooter did not use explosives.  The attackers in Paris and Brussels used a crude, homemade explosive called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP.  TATP is made from common household cleaning products and is very hard to detect because it does not contain nitrogen (like TNT, nitroglycerin, and the “fertilizer bombs” used in the Oklahoma City bombings).  Our detection systems have gotten quite good at finding nitrogen-based explosives, but not so much this TATP.  
   
   One of the essential tasks of countering terrorism is denying the terrorists access to the weapons necessary to cause rapid mass death.  We’ve gotten good at keeping an eye on suspicious people buying suspicious amounts of nitrogen-based explosive ingredients.  We are not yet so good at monitoring suspicious people for TATP production, but the fact that TATP is very unstable makes it considerably more difficult (though obviously not impossible) for a terrorist to use it as an explosive in a terrorist attack.  
   
   This leaves us with firearms, particularly ones like the AR-15 which are explicitly designed to shoot and kill many targets quickly and with ease.  It IS possible to deny terrorists access to these sorts of weapons.  It is simply (and immensely frustratingly) a matter of political will.
   
   It is also essential to note that this attack was the work of a lone individual, unlike the Paris and Brussels attacks carried out and supported by a well-integrated, well-financed, well-coordinated terrorist cell.  The attackers in Paris and Brussels needed so many things to go right for them for their plans not to be noticed and foiled.  They needed communities with blind eyes that would not notice their planning, murderous ambitions, and dangerous hostility towards the countries they lived in.  They needed to live in a place where the locals did not have the ties, trust, and good relations with police that would have made them more likely to report suspicious behavior.  They needed access to guns through secretive networks that are not well-controlled by local security services.  They needed the Belgian (and to some extent the French, but mostly the Belgian) security services to be dreadfully aloof, uncoordinated, and incompetent enough to miss the red flags they put up.  They needed a strong network of sympathizers and assailants who would house them, feed them, buy them burner phones, give alibis, help them acquire weapons, and help them survey targets.
   
   These things do not exist in the United States to nearly the extent that they did in Brussels and Paris.  American Muslim communities do not have the sort of alienation and distaste for their adopted homeland as do places like Molenbeek and the Muslim-majority Paris slums.  Indeed, American Muslim communities have proven the single most valuable resource for our law enforcement in identifying and stopping violent extremists.  A terrorist cell is much less likely to be able to find the secrecy, aloofness, and alienation that existed in the places where the Paris and Brussels attackers came from and which were essential in the Paris and Brussels attacks succeeding.  Moreover, American security authorities are much more competent, coordinated, and willing to act (too willing, if you ask the families of people who allege that the FBI actively goaded their loved ones into planning terrorist attacks) than those in Belgium.  The threat of intricate attacks orchestrated by organized terrorist units is a threat that the United States is well-equipped to handle.  For people like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to suggest that we need to crack down on Muslim communities in order to stop these attacks, or that the Obama Administration has been grossly negligent in allowing terrorist cells to develop and successfully operate in the United States, is factually bankrupt, ignorant, racist, and actively counter-productive.  Such people deserve not to be listened to, but to be shamed, condemned, and mocked.
   
4. If you take a look at the Graeme Wood report, you’ll see that part of ISIS’ strategy is to destroy the “grey space” in which Muslims and non-Muslims can co-exist.  They have explicitly stated that they want to provoke reactions from the West that will turn Muslims in the West actively hostile to their adopted homelands and push them to supporting ISIS.  They are actively trying to make living in the West unbearable for Muslims in the hopes that Muslims from around the world will turn to the Caliphate as their protector and legitimate source of authority.  They want to enrage us. They want to provoke us. They ultimately want to goad the West into launching a massive invasion of the Middle East to defeat ISIS.  ISIS believes that scriptural prophecies foretell that there will be a grand, epic, decisive battle between the ‘forces of Rome (the West)’ and the forces of Islam in a place called Dabiq, which is located near Latakia in Syria.  They believe that when their forces have been routed and are on the brink of destruction in Jerusalem, the Messiah will suddenly appear and bring forth Armageddon, destroying the world as we know it and bringing about the Next World.
   
   For Western politicians to actively indulge ISIS’ ambitions and confirm their propaganda is unconscionably stupid, counterproductive, and reckless.  People like Donald Trump who appeal to the base tribalism, fear of the ‘other,’ and lust for vengeance in their populations are precisely what ISIS wants to see.  ISIS wants for Muslims to suffer so much in the West that they are willing to tolerate (or even accept) ISIS as the answer.  This happened already in many of the Sunni-majority parts of Iraq where the rule of the Shi’a-dominated Baghdad government became so intolerable that they were willing to tolerate being ruled by ISIS in the absence of another legitimate, Sunni-friendly authority.  
   
   What we need to do is make clear to our Muslim communities and to the Muslim world that America is a place that welcomes them and will protect them as human beings.  We need to embrace our Muslim friends, family, and neighbors and grieve side-by-side with them for our loss.  We need to show the world that our project of pluralistic, diverse, multiethnic, and multiconfessional democracy is possible, worth aspiring to, and the best way to go at the end of the day.  
   
   What would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. do?  What would Nelson Mandella do?  What would Muhammad Ali do?  What would Mr. Rodgers do?  What can we do that our children, their children, and their children’s children will be proud of?
   
   Let’s hope that those people would, at the very least, have our political leadership exercise some damn human decency and read a goddamn intelligence briefing.
   

Explainer 5 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Explainer 5: Can we trust Iran to submit to the inspections regime and to not pursue a nuclear weapon in the future?

We don't have to have faith in them. Iran has permitted the US and the world to see for themselves. If Iran engages in nuclear activities that are military in nature, we will know.

How do we know that we'll know?

The agreement implements monitoring of the entire nuclear fuel cycle.  From the moment uranium ore is extracted from the earth, to the time it is processed into usable metal, to the time that it is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas to be spun in thousands of sophisticated centrifuges to isolate and concentrate the U-235 isotope, to the point where it is cast into pieces of nuclear fuel, to the moment it is disposed of (and not converted into fissile plutonium), it is being constantly counted, watched, and monitored.  If the monitoring shows that the amount of nuclear fuel produced at declared Iranian nuclear sites does not correspond with the amounts one would expect from a given amount of extracted uranium, inspectors will know that the Iranians are up to funny business.

What about UNdeclared nuclear sites, like the facilities at Qom and Parchin, or even ones we don't know about?

Nuclear enrichment and nuclear weapons manufacturing are not at all easy to conceal.  To do nuclear enrichment, one must have a MASSIVE supply of electric power to run the centrifuges, large amounts of totally sterile and spotless space in which to run thousands of centrifuges, and rather conspicuous supply and logistics lines.  All of these things can be reliably monitored by American and other Western geospatial and signals intelligence capacity.

What about the whole 24-days thing?  24 days!

Critics of the deal are saying that we will have to give the Iranians 24 days' notice before conducting any inspections.  This is simply untrue.

The IAEA, and the American and Western representatives who will help carry out its mandate, have constant monitoring of Iran's declared nuclear sites.  That includes 24/7 video monitoring, frequent inspections, and strict oversight of the whole nuclear fuel cycle.

If the US or its partners were to find a site they want inspected that is NOT on the list of declared Iranian nuclear sites, the process by which the IAEA, the concerned international party, and Iran negotiate and coordinate the inspection of that site may take no longer than 24 days.

Can't Iran just cover it up with that much warning?

If it is nearly impossible to get all of the nuclear equipment and infrastructure away from a site within 24 days, it is physically impossible to scrub the site clean of radiation and other evidence of nuclear activity in anywhere near that time frame.  If there is evidence of undeclared, unauthorized nuclear activity at a site, it will be found.

Most of all, if and when the IAEA, the US, or its partners discover that Iran is up to some funny business, we will be in a very strong position to investigate it and extract answers.  If we find that Iran is in violation of the nonproliferation deal, we will be in far, far stronger position to inflict intolerable punishment upon them for it than we would if the deal was not in place. Moreover, permitting Iran, Iranian businesses, and Iranian people to form relationships with Western business, social, and political entities will make it all the more painful for Iran to forsake those fresh ties if they decide to engage in military nuclear activity. As the flight of Western corporations and capital from Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crises have shown, Western firms are not very inclined to invest billions of dollars in countries against whom the US is engaged in geopolitical combat.

I posted about this the other night, but Iranians are dancing in the streets over this deal. They welcome it. They want it to work. They want their proud nation to re-gain its ties with other respectable countries. They want to be able to buy Western goods and watch Western shows and listen to Western music. I really feel like Iranians, especially young Iranians, feel like they have a stake in this deal working. This means something to the Grand Ayatollah, and it means something to their democratically-elected leader, Hassan Rouhani. Iran is hurting, and it doesn't want to hurt anymore.

Explainer 6: What's the worst that can happen if we reject the deal?

There's a lot of speculation on this question, but I'm going to stick the implications for American diplomacy and the conditions we would be imposing on the geopolitical game theory calculus and chess game.

If we reject this deal, we have rejected THE diplomatic option for ensuring that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.  The only option left on the table is the military one.  If we do not accept this deal, it will mean that at the end of the day, our only avenue to reliably prevent Iranian nuclear weapons acquisition is to physically stop them from developing and constructing the bomb.  That would, realistically, mean destroying and rebuilding the Islamic Republic of Iran.  As some of you might remember, it did not go so well the last time we tried to do something like this.

Almost as important to note is that if we reject this deal, we have told the whole world that our pretenses for making them forego lucrative and geopolitically-advantageous business with Iran--to force Iran to agree to a highly-restrictive nuclear deal--were blatantly false.  We told the whole world that Iran needed to be isolated and shunned and punished because it was a threat to world security, but we showed that our real reason was that we just did not like them.  What's more, we broadcast to the world that when the US comes to the negotiating table, it's our way or the highway.  We don't make concessions.  We don't compromise.  We don't sacrifice.  In other words, using diplomacy as a way to resolve disputes with the United States is useless.

You know what that means?

It means that a lot more of our demands are going to either be empty threats (meaning we cannot get what we want or need) or commitments to war--to massive expenditures of treasure, to substantial diplomatic and geopolitical pain, and to the loss of life, limb, and spirit for thousands of American men and women under arms.  

Explainer 4 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Explainer 4: Why didn't they get a better deal?

Because opponents of this diplomacy in Israel and in the GOP have not really been forthcoming on specifics of what would constitute a "better deal," we are left to conjecture. From what I can surmise, they want a deal like this:

• Iran dismantles all nuclear infrastructure. No uranium enrichment. No plutonium reprocessing. Maybe even no nuclear energy.
• Iran concedes to American/Israeli interests on a range of other issues, including handing over four Americans held prisoner in Iran, the Iranian ballistic missile programme, and Iranian military/covert actions around the region. 
• I don't know, the Iranian government disappears and the Iranian people all of the sudden love America.

There is no basis for the United States to demand these things. Remember, Iran is guaranteed the right to peaceful nuclear energy under the NPT. Also, recall that the Iranian nuclear programme started about 50-odd years ago because THE US BUILT IT FOR THEM. There is also nothing in the NPT or in international law denying Iran the right to enrich its own nuclear fuel, and there are legitimate reasons why Iran would want to manufacture its own fuel supply.

The US has imposed the sanctions regime on Iran with the support of the international community by telling the international community that Iran was keen on violating international law (namely the NPT). If Iran is willing to accept a very, very highly scrutinising inspections regime to guarantee that they are not violating the NPT, and yet the US is still not satisfied, then our partners (and rivals) around the world have precious little reason to continue bearing costs to maintain the sanctions. They will simply no longer cooperate, and the sanctions regime that forced Iran to the table and which forced them to concede what they have will become a mere shell of itself, and it will lose pretty much all coercive force.

If Iran and the P5+1 were to come to a comprehensive agreement on the nuclear programme, but the US still refuses to accept Iran's nuclear concessions unless Iran also makes concessions on a whole range of other issues in which they are arguably not violating international law (certainly not international norms) and have no reason to concede on, not only will a deal be impossible, but maintaining the sanctions regime will also be impossible.  

From what I can tell from Israel's objections, they are hostile to the very idea of the US negotiating with an Iranian regime that is overtly and actively hostile to Israel. Those are certainly valid concerns, and the US has made strong commitments to Israeli security. But at the end of the day, Israel is not the only commitment or interest the US has in the region. The US and its Western partners cannot tolerate an indefinite geopolitical conflict with Iran, and they are not willing to invade Iran and institute an occupation regime.
If the past two years of Israeli foreign policy have offered any insight into how Israel negotiates with its enemies, we've learned that Israel simply doesn't do that. Israel wants its enemies destroyed. They had a golden opportunity to make real progress towards peace with Palestinians when Hamas and Fatah agreed to a unity government that would recognise Israel's right to exist. Israel rejected it out of hand because they don't want Hamas to exist. Instead, they let relations with Gaza deteriorate to the point of war, at which point they tried to resolve their issue with Hamas by playing whack-a-mole with bombs. They did not succeed.

Israel cannot destroy Iran. The US will not destroy Iran for Israel. Israel had best reconcile itself with the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and maybe behave in such a fashion that Israel and Iran aren't at each others' throats.

But Joel! Iran doesn't even recognise Israel's right to exist! Iran thinks Israel is evil and should be wiped off the map!

1) The widely-circulated translation of Ahmedinejad's remarks is incorrect. He did not call for Israel to be destroyed. He said that the Zionist project of Israel should not exist. Not friendly, but also not "I will destroy you."

2) Pretty much every country in the Middle East outwardly speaks of Israel as an illegitimate state and an enemy, and yet they've gotten over themselves. Egypt got over it. Saudi Arabia got over it. Syria got over it. The Gulf states got over it. Turkey got over it. Hamas was willing to get over it before Israel went to war with them again. They all de facto treat Israel as a potentially rival but legitimate counterparty in regional geopolitics. If Israel stops launching covert ops against Iran and assassinating their scientists, Iran will get over it, too.

Explainer 3 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Explainer Question 3: Why is this happening now?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013 on a campaign that promised to rebuild a lagging Iranian economy and repair relations with the West. That meant negotiating an end to the sanctions imposed by the P5+1 (the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council; the US, UK, France, PR China, and Russia, plus Germany). The Obama Administration considers this to have been a sign that the sanctions regime worked--because of the pain we inflicted upon Iran, they were forced to come to the negotiating table.

After about a year and a half of talks, and countless signals from Israeli, American, and Iranian politicians that this deal just wasn't gonna happen, the P5+1 and Iran have come to a concrete accord by which Iran will dismantle some elements of its nuclear programme and permit an unprecedentedly thorough and expansive regime of inspections in exchange for the gradual lifting of sanctions and un-freezing of Iranian assets in the West. This was achieved despite plenty of loud, disruptive, antagonistic shouting by government figures outside of the negotiations in Iran, Israel, and the US.

Factors that have likely contributed to the talks finally resolving include:
Israel repeatedly showing that it does not give a damn about how the US feels about its actions toward Iran or the Palestinian people, and that it is not serious at all about a meangingful, negotiated peace with its Palestinian neighbours. This likely freed the Obama Administration of some of its reservations about pissing off the Israelis because, after all, so what? Israel won't respect us anyway.
The case is similar with Saudi Arabia, I reckon. What's Saudi Arabia gonna do if we piss them off? Effectively turn ISIS into a giant of jihadist terror? Oh, wait, they already did!

The sanctions coalition is fracturing. When the big round of sanctions was imposed, the US and Russia were operating as distinct yet cooperating counter-parties in world affairs. Russia is now taking on the US and the West as an enemy, and is happy to not cooperate with American foreign policy objectives much at all. The case is similar with PR China, whose relations with the US are increasingly confrontational. Moreover, given the threats on European hydrocarbon (natural gas and petroleum) supplies from Russian aggression, Europe is probably really keen on doing business with the Iranians again, as well.

The US and the Western security order really need Iran's help taking on ISIS, and they need ours. ISIS and al-Qaeda are common enemies of the West and of Iran.

Explainer 2 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Explainer Question 2: How do we know Iran posed a nuclear threat, anyway?

This is a very good question. Iran has insisted for about a decade that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful in nature. Indeed, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Khameini, has explicitly declared nuclear weapons to be HARAM, or forbidden by Islam. Moreover, Iran is guaranteed the right to a non-military nuclear energy programme by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT, to which the US and Iran are both signatories). It's essential to note that public American intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that Iran has not decided to acquire a nuclear weapon.

That is all well and good, but it is clear from other evidence that Iran has been actively pursuing the LATENT nuclear capacity (the ability to quickly construct a field-worthy nuclear weapon should they make the call to acquire one).

How do we know this?

Iran has been caught conducting nuclear activities outside of the ones that they've declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. They have been caught doing experiments on tightly-coordinated implosive detonations (one of the two means of causing a nuclear detonation). Iran has also been enriching uranium (a highly technologically intensive process which Iran does not have to do in order to produce nuclear energy, since they can buy reactor fissile material easily) to concentrations much higher than they need for nuclear energy (enriching to 20%, whereas nuclear reactors run on 4.3% enrichment, and there is no marginal benefit of taking it up to 20), and in much higher amounts than could plausibly be explained by peaceful uses (Iran claims that it is enriching to 20% for medical nuclear uses, but they sure don't need THAT much). Moreover, Iran's highly aggressive and active geopolitical posturing (through the development of its military, and particularly its deployment of covert forces and proxies, such as Hezbollah, Hamas [to a lesser extent], and the Quds force under General Qassem Suleimani) makes fears about their nuclear military ambitions very, very valid.

We have not been falsifying a confrontation with Iran. Iran is not an innocent, harmless state.

Explainer 1 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Hey everyone!

If you know me, then you know that there's little that I enjoy more in this world than looking smart on the internet. Thus, I'm gonna do a series of explainers on what the hell is up with this "Iran nuclear deal!" My information comes from a) my instruction in the 2010-2011 EPIIC class on nuclear issues, and b) my readings and learning since.  In particular, this article by Max Fisher of Vox informs a lot in my later explainers. If you disagree about a point or want to know what I'm basing it on, please feel free to comment.

1) What the heck is this all about?
The prospect of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon is one that rightly fills Washington, Tel Aviv, and most every other European and Middle Eastern capital with dread. The governments of these countries do not look kindly upon Iran. Whereas every Muslim Middle Eastern country other than Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain is majority Sunni (the dominant branch of Islam), those other countries are majority Shi'a. Iran is by far the most powerful, the most capable, and the most religiously and politically organised of the Shia majority countries. Because of this, along with a number of other factors, countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the rich Gulf states, and (to a lesser extent) Turkey look upon Iran as a geopolitical rival. Indeed, these countries have been essentially fighting against Iran by means of each side's proxies in Syria (the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey supporting the anti-Assad rebels, prominently including al-Qaeda and ISIS, whereas Iran is supporting the Assad government and its partners in Hezzbollah with both indirect and direct assistance).

Were Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon that they could field in combat, it would be profoundly destabilising in the Middle East, and thus the world. If Iran became a nuclear-armed country, it is almost certain that Saudi Arabia and the rich Gulf states would seek to acquire one as well. More big red nuclear buttons means more risk of those buttons being pressed. It would also put Israel in a position whereby it would actually be facing a plausible existential threat from abroad--a condition which has not existed since Syrian forces broke through Israeli lines the Yom Kippur War.

Right now, there exists a status quo in which Iran and the rest of the Middle East knows that if Tehran crosses a certain line (active aggression against American Gulf allies, a direct attack against Israel, or especially blocking the Straits of Hormuz, through which a large fraction of the world's petroleum is shipped), it would be met with a large US military response. Iran knows that it cannot win in a fight where the United States is hitting them with its massive cyber, naval, and aerospace superiority. The US is the best in the world at that kind of fighting, and there is nobody that can go into one of those fights against us thinking that they will win. This constrains Iran to a range of actions which, although destabilising and highly frustrating to American interests, are within a realm that the US can handle.

Were Iran to acquire plausible nuclear weapons capabilities, the US would be unable to smack Iran down without risking catastrophic Iranian retaliation. This is unacceptable.

The Obama Administration has made the denial of Iranian nuclear capability a key focal point of its foreign policy throughout its tenure. The Russia "reset" was instrumental to establishing the sanctions regime that forced Iran to the negotiating table. These negotiations have been a large priority in allocating US political and diplomatic capital. The Obama Administration made essentially no effort to support the Green Revolution in 2009 because a) it would have been entirely counter-productive, and b) because Iran has made it very, very clear that the highest priority of its diplomacy with the US is to maintain Iranian sovereignty and Iranian control of its own politics. Attempting to intervene would have poisoned the well of US-Iranian relations for decades to come.

On 'We Need to Fix Mental Healthcare in This Country'

The last several things I've on my Facebook (the NYT column on guns and civil society, the Atlantic's "The Secret History of Guns") been in regards to guns.  Now, a thought on another aspect of the circumstances in this country which contribute to the epidemic of mass murders.

People keep saying 'we need to improve our mental health system.'  This is true.  We've done terrible things to the funding of our state mental institutions and mental health care.  We need to work on our mental health infrastructure.

The oft-posted HuffPost article by Liza Long highlighted a rather interesting fact; it's hard to put someone in an environment where they can get serious treatment for violent psychiatric disorders other than by incarcerating them.  I can't claim to have a better alternative.  I can't say 'this must change.'  But I can say that this seems extremely counter-productive and needs re-evaluating.

But the infrastructure of hospitals and mental health providers is only a part of the American mental health system.  Another critical part is social workers.

I think you'd have a very hard time finding more than a very few social workers in this country who have a workload close to resembling what it's designed to be.  They are hopelessly overloaded.  I reckon it's damn near impossible for a social worker in this country to give most of their cases the time each are due.  The pay is miserable.  The hours (something along the lines of 24/7) are miserable.  The work, while often highly rewarding, can be utterly soul-crushing.  Did I mention the pay is miserable?

How ought we fix this?  Better incentives to work as a social worker?  Better pay? Benefits?

Perhaps.  But I can't see these as being very effective.  Being a case worker is just so incredibly difficult.  So thankless.  So trying.

A whole bunch of the young folks who enter programmes like Teach For America aren't able to carry through for the whole duration of their programme, and even more don't keep on teaching.  Working with at-risk kids can just be so rough.

And teachers are just confronted with the shit that comes up from cracks in the ground.  Social workers are called upon to plunge directly into said shit.

Moreover, history doesn't provide a very promising picture when it comes to maintaining additional investments in our mental health physical or human infrastructure.  Social workers and mental health facilities are often some of the first victims of austerity.

This isn't a very optimistic post.  I don't have solutions.  I might be grossly misunderstanding the situation of social workers in this country.

But the role I've carved out for myself as a participant in our nation's political discourse is not as a solutions man.  It's as a problems man.

Because when you don't understand all the problems, when you don't see all the factors contributing to something being FUBAR, when you don't see all the brushstrokes in the picture and all the stars in the constellation of shit, what hope do you have of finding a decent solution?

To our the leaders of our nation's political institutions and the mental health community, and to the social workers who serve as grunts wading through some of the worst things humanity has to offer; Godspeed.