Newshoggers Archive: Feingold "likely to oppose" troop increases for Afghanistan

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, August 5, 2009

Feingold "likely to oppose" troop increases for Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

Spencer Ackerman has the news for The Washington Independent.

If Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposes, as expected, an increase in U.S. troops for the Afghanistan war, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is �likely to oppose it,� the senator told TWI.

...�I don�t think the case has been effectively made for continuing to send more and more troops into Afghanistan,� Feingold said in a Wednesday interview. �I am very unhappy with the answers I�ve received about the issue of whether constantly increasing troops is helping the situation in Pakistan or making it worse. I suspect it could be making things worse.�

...�I�m a little worried that it�s �Let�s do the surge again, like we did in Iraq and it�ll all work out fine,�� Feingold said. �It strikes me as not fairly in tune with the history of Afghanistan and the geopolitics of the region. I�m willing to listen and I�m willing to give the general a chance to articulate it and maybe it�ll improve. But it strikes me as �Let�s just keep sending more troops in and see what we�ll do with them after they get there,� rather than having a clear vision of what the real goals are.�

So far, the sole voice of sanity in the Senate has been Bernie Sanders, but Feingold says he's hearing "A nervousness ... not only among Democrats, but Republicans as well.�

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Feingold "likely to oppose" troop increases for Afghanistan

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