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, July 29, 2009

Bribery Works

By Fester:


War is politics by other means.  And Politics is economics by other means. 


Two tautologies, where the first is stronger then the second, but useful thoughts as people fight to achieve certain goals, and most goals have substitutes that are available.  Cash, prestige, recognition are often viable substitutes.  The combination of untraceable cash, a recognition of Anbari elite tribal power structures and influence and a dramatic reduction in hostilities underlies the short term success of the Anbar Awakening movement.  The elites were willing to be bought out and bring their followers with them. 


The same lesson could be applied in Afghanistan as some Taliban elements are apparantely willing to be bought out, or at least leased at attractive rates. 


Via the Telegraph:



Diplomats said they believed officials had "bought" a temporary truce until next month's presidential election for �20,000.


One senior Western diplomat said he feared it was part of a plot to manipulate the vote in Badghis province in north-west Afghanistan.


20,000 pounds is roughly $40,000.  This bribe will buy the Kabul government a month of quiet in a single district.  The marginal US soldier costs the US government about $100,000 per year, or roughly 2.5 months of peace in the district at the going rate.  Roughly 5 US soldiers marginal costs could fund the pay-offs and comparative peace in this district per year.  


The US government is expanding the Army by 22,000 soldiers to partially deal with the higher op-tempo of surging to Afghanistan while reconstituting from the Iraq withdrawal.  That will cost roughly 4,000 local truce buy-outs per year if the US adapts minimal goals.  Bribery and basic goals work. 



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  1. andersonJuly 30, 2009 at 8:59 AM

    War is politics by other means. And Politics is economics by other means.
    But these also serve as premises by which the logical deduction becomes, to no one's astonishment, that War is Economics.

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