When I saw the subject line, I will confess that my first assumption was A. Doak Barnett, long-time China scholar (I don't know why, but I always think of him first even though I suspect he's retired). Then I thought of Barnett Rubin, who's an expert on Afghanistan. Then I considered Roger Barnett, a former fellow Naval War College professor with whom I--quite frankly--rarely saw eye to eye. Then I clicked on the link a reader provided me (Brad B., methinks?) Dean Barnett, who writes a lot of stuff seemingly all over the web (but limited to conservative circles) is very upset about a recent post and in general, I would surmise, regarding my analysis of Iran. Feeling betrayed because he once praised PNM (I don't get the sense he's read BFA, hence his comments about my not addressing irrational actors like radical Islamists in PNM--a complaint more than a few readers leveled at PNM, which is why I made a point of including such analysis in the sequel), Dean demands to know my sources and how I've come to my conclusions. Luckily for Dean, my blog, with over 5000 posts, is searchable. In it, I detail my contacts and travels of the past three-plus years, plus all the stuff I read--every single article or book. It is easy to spot the evolution of my thinking on any subject in the blog. I basically lay it all out for anyone to see. After 18 years of working professionally with the military, intelligence community and the rest of the US Government and private defense sector, I do get around. And I've written my conclusions down in roughly 100 published (not just posted) articles and columns, plus the two books. Dean comes at this blogging trade from a very different career path, so I can't say what his learning curve has been on radical Islam, although I would caution him not to raise the case of 9/11 in a post so focused on Iran. Bundling everything up as "radical Islam" can be very misleading, especially since al-Qaida (responsible for 9/11) is exclusive Sunni-derived and Iran is Shia. Of the publicly available sources I would cite (and no, that doesn't define my universe of sources, because I actually do this for a living), Vali Nasr's "Shia Revival" if you want to get a sense of how the two don't go naturally together and--indeed--how their centuries of bloody conflict have basically defined Islam's history. I also recommend anything written by the French academic Olivier Roy on radical Islam. I used his "Globalised Islam" in BFA. Fantastic analysis. On Iran in particular I recommend Ray Takeyh, whom I've cited a couple of times in the blog. Houchang Chehabi, who served on my PhD board, also taught me a lot about Iran, in a dialogue going back to the mid-1980s. I also admire the work of Tehran-based professor Mahmood Sarioghalam. He's apparently a Davos regular. More generally, I would recommend Stephen Prothero's "Religious Literacy." Turns out Christianity has long had a millennarian strain that: 1) is uncomfortably comparable to Shiism (see Nasr on this) and 2) has gotten quite a few people killed over the centuries and even here in America (most famously in recent history at Waco TX). Whether or not any of them yelled "praise Jesus" at the last minute, I have no idea, but I suspect the sentiment was there, however distorted by circumstance and ideology. Religion is a very complex thing, as is international relations. I maintain this blog so I can reveal that sort of complexity as it relates to national and international security affairs (in terms of the sources required for analytical thought, the formulation of such analysis in general, and the type of career--both academic and real-world practice--that I believe is necessary for developing expertise), writing from my perspective as a long-time professional in the field. When people agree with that analysis, I am--by their definition--very smart, experienced and credentialed. When they don't, I am--again by their definition--none of those things. You learn to live with the criticism, always considering the source, and you simply go on sharing all your sources, analytical evolution and conclusions, trusting smart readers to figure out for themselves what they think is right. Dean has agreed with that approach in the past. He no longer does on the subject of radical Islam and Iran in particular, believing the latter situation invalidates my entire approach to international relations. I will live with that, because I don't have any trouble finding plenty of very experienced people in my work that agree with my thinking and support it. And yes, I mean the Gingrich comparison as a compliment to Ahmadinejad, who's one sly populist campaigner (check out his nationally televised 30-minute campaign vid from 2004: he puts Fred Thompson's good old boy-shtick to shame with a clever play on "this old car" to make him seem so humble compared to Rafsanjani). A good source of analysis of the "deterrable" consequences of Iran's achieving the bomb, see a great Center for Naval Analyses study on this by Henry Gaffney et. al. I suspect it's not available for public release, but it's a very sensible document that jibes nicely with Schelling's observations about the history of nuclear deterrence. As much as I respect Dean's writing in general, I don't live or die with criticism from the blogosphere. If you're going to be a grand strategist, you have to tell people what they need to hear, not want they want to hear. Good example? See my column this weekend. It's sure to piss off plenty. Then again, I find that it's perfectly okay to be an out-of-the-box thinker . . . until you jump out of somebody's preferred box. Then you're guilty of pathetically naive thinking. But I got used to that phenomenon about a quarter-century ago.