First the suggestion: I love Glenn's radio show, but the schedule and format still seem a little awkward. Wouldn't it be better to have one or two shows a week, of an hour length? Because of the nature of the shows (its not like This American Life, where you can listen while balancing your checkbook) you sort of need undivided attention. I can't listen at work, and so miss most of the shows. That's jsut me, maybe--anyone else facing that issue? Also, the format for those of us Ipod-less is somewhat frustrating. You can't right click and download unless you have Itunes or Realplayer...

The quibbles: Two in fact. The first for the Anthrax radio program. I've been a fan of Rosen since I accidentally stumbled upon his blog a few months ago while writing a paper on the effect of blogs on the mainstream media. But one thing I didn't agree with was the idea, shared by Glenn, that the media was too hasty in countervailing an unnamed white house source, against the white house's own denials. If I understood this argument correctly, once the white house denied the Bentonite story, Rosen believes it should have been put to rest. I agree on some level, but logically, you would be able to turn this around in such a way that whistle blowers at the white house (should there be any) or other cabinet level agencies would be silenced as soon as the white house denied their stories as well. Not that it makes a difference, but I think one standard should apply across the board, even if the product is disinformation. Perhaps, i misunderstood the basic argument.

Lastly, I am no scholar of Ossetia. However, it does seem that one of the primary underlying issues in this conflict is access to natural resources. That seems to be the main factor driving US interest and Russian interest in a country whose population is somewhat smaller than the town where I grew up. I didn't see any reference to that in King's op-ed, but I haven't had a chance to listen to the show.

Anyone else noticed when Russia follows its own version of the Ledeen doctrine, the Neocons throw the loudest hissy fit?

"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

It might just be me, but the audio on this one sounds pitched up a good deal. If I wanted to hear chipmunks dissect current events, I'd watch Fox and Friends!

Looking forward to hearing this analysis. Seems to me that Russia has brutally called the West's bluff, and its distressing to see a conventional wisdom crystallizing where Georgia - who seem to have engaged in some ethnic cleansing here - are held up as American allies to be rallied around and Russia demonized, when the reality is far more complex.

when the neocons decided that "regime change" was a legitimate foreign policy option for the US to pursue in Iraq, that they opened the door for Russia to do exactly the same thing in Georgia.

Furthermore, the fact that hundreds of billions (trillions?) of dollars have been spent on the war, and that the military is suffering from overextension necessarily implies that the US has no practical foreign policy options when it comes to any response to Russia's actions.

So, really, there are two problems with pursuing a foreign policy based on naked aggression. (Or semi-naked aggression in the case of Iraq, but the only people who don't view it as aggression are naive Kool-aid drinkers in the US, and every war has such a cadre of fools.) One problem is that the aggressor nation loses any moral standing in the international community. And moral standing is not merely something that makes feel good about themselves. It is a necessary prerequisite to peaceful resolutions of disputes.

And the second problem is that pursuing wars of aggression tends to tie up valuable resources that make it difficult for the nation to respond to new situations.

Right now, the US has little course to pursue other than scolding Russia. I realize that is impolitic for pundits to admit, though, so we'll have to find some what to deal with the Kristols of the world.

As to that problem, I have no clue what to do.

Am I the only one who finds the premise of this post strange? How can there be a prevailing narrative when there is virtually no coverage? Doesn't the press know that if nothing else we love us some live war coverage? I understand that the U.S. can't do a whole lot regarding this situation, but I am a hundred times more interested in this story than who John Edwards was fucking 2 years ago. Every time I flipped to the news channels this weekend it was either the horse race, Edwards, or "God's Warriors" on CNN. And don't get me started on W.

"Mr. President, World War III might have just started"

"Shut up, I'm trying to watch volleyball!"

Gee, I think I'll take a few minutes to read that rather than listen to a podcast about it.

Glenn, relax man, enjoy your vacation. We'll live without ya for a week, and we sure sure when summer turns into fall, you'll have plenty to write about.

There seemed to be a glitch in logging in to post responses earlier today - I wouldn't want anyone to think that because this show is a quite thoughtful discussion on different motives and concerns in the S.Ossetia dispute that others aren't as interested in it as they are in, say, U.S. politics. Even if that's probably in part true.

I think that in the show Glenn, and to some extent King, veers too quickly away from the U.S. narrative. I'm not saying Russia's all at fault, just that it's less about fault then about resolution. King and Glenn touched on the most relevant analogy here: Kosovo. Or, for that matter, Ireland and the U.S. You simply cannot carve out a piece of a country and say because in this part the majority of people - many of them recent immigrants or settlers - support another form of government that they should automatically self-determine. It was wrong of Britain to assert that right in Ireland, wrong of the U.S. and Albania to assert that right in Kosovo and it's wrong of Russia to do so here.

Are we hypocrites? Did Georgia overreach because they thought they had our support, and help provoke the mess? Is the media only telling one side of the story? Sure. Does Russia need to withdraw immediately and unconditionally? Also true - Georgia is an internationally recognized sovreign nation. We shouldn't "be grateful that Russia isn't bombing Tblisi". I wish we abided by international law in Iraq, but we shouldn't lose sight of that now.