Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Quiet Week in Iraq

By Fester:


Peace, prosperity, persuadable puppets and flat taxes have been achieved in Iraq. 


That is the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the lack of coverage of such a quiet week in Iraq.  Why, almost nothing happened, I had to go digging for the following incidents:


6/24/09 Kurds are claiming Kirkuk as their own



6/24/09 Large car bomb in Sadr City kills at least 50


6/24/09 5 seperate fatal or multi-casualty incidents in Mosul


6/23/09 Kurds declare central government control over Kurdish oil reserves unconstitutional 


6/21/09 9 police in Baghdad are killed in clashes


6/21/09 More fighting in Mosul


6/20/09 Large truck bomb kills at least 60 in northern Iraq


And this is only a slight bump up in violence from recent baseline but this is not an unusual week, or portion thereof.  This is only an excerpt of reported incidents and fatalities.  There are two hundred or so individuals who are dead in these incidents.  There are massive conflicts over resource claims which are fundamentally zero sum in nature and thus prone to intense conflict and a potential stabilizer of Iranian influence may be removed as Iran may turn inwards. 


And this is what 'success' looks like and it is what the COIN advocates are pointing to as a positive outcome instead of an opportunity to exit after massive ethnic cleansing, communal violence and system destabilization as well as the creation of a massive cohort of men who have plenty of experience in fighting against the United States as urban guerrillas. 




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2 comments:

  1. LexJune 25, 2009 at 12:08 AM

    So then what you're saying is that COIN works best when we pretend it isn't happening? Or, all that's needed is for there to be serious political upheaval in nations like Iran, sequentially, so that we have something newer, shinier and more exciting to stay focused on. If that happens, we can declare victory in Iraq.

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  2. Steve HyndJune 25, 2009 at 8:51 AM

    LOL Lex. America's two favorite colors are "Ooooh!" and "Shiny!"
    Seriously, though, that first link is bad news. The Kirkuk question is the most likely starting point for a full-on Iraqi civil war, and the Kurds haven't only said they've a right to annex Kirkuk. Their new constitution also claims "areas within Nineveh and Diyala provinces" as part of Iraqi Kurdistan. There's no way Baghdad can let that happen.
    Regards, Steve

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