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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Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Surge's Lack of Success

By Fester:


As we should all remember, the goal of the Surge was to use a short term boost of troops combined with an expansive patrolling and presence COIN doctrine combined with buying out the Sunni Arab native insurgency to create a window of comparative peace and quiet in which political issues such as the division of oil revenues, Kirkuk's status and refugee flows could be resolved.  None of those goals were accomplished.  Violence has decreased as the Sunnis have stayed leased and Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed.  Mosul and Kirkuk are still divided cities, and therefore they are still violent cities.  The US Army and Air Force are Maliki's political enforcers more than anything else.  The SOFA removed the reason for nationalists to shoot at the US, or at least the non-hardcore nationalist groups as their objective of removing the US has been achieved. 


A US Colonel proposes that the US accelerate its withdrawal from Iraq because there is no positive pay-off to staying:




The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis �forward.� Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:


1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of GOI [ed note: Government of Iraq] Ministries is the stuff of legend.


2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki


3. The GOI is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.


4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.


5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably going backwards.


6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to ISF [ed note: Iraqi Security Forces] and GOI civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.


The Iraqi government is unable to provide basic services, fund itself despite oil prices in the mid-60s and the limited political movement of Sunni and Kurd political integration into a single, Shi'ite dominated state structure has reversed itself.  That is not a strategic success.  That is a strategic failure despite any claims of opearational success.  Getting out of a failing state is a good idea, especially when our presence enables further failure cascades. 



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  1. Ron BeasleyJuly 30, 2009 at 11:48 AM

    What Col Reese says makes a lot of sense unfortunately he's a bit of a reactive flack.

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