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, August 13, 2009

Gates Says It's A Mystery How Long Afghan War Will Last!

By Steve Hynd


What, is it Jumping The Shark week for the Obama administration? Yesterday we had Holbrooke compare the Afghanistan occupation to pornography, saying he couldn't say what success would look like but "We'll know it when we see it." Today, we have Bob Gates admitting he's mystified as to how long the U.S. will be enmired there.



�In the intelligence business, we always used to categorize information � in two ways: secrets and mysteries,� the former CIA boss told a briefing Thursday.


The secrets were things that were ultimately knowable,� Gates said. �The mysteries were those where there were too many variables to predict.�


Yup, you guessed it. How long U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan falls into the mysteries category.


... How long that takes will depend on the Afghan political environment and on how long it takes to train the country�s security forces, Gates said.


Therein lies the mystery.


The ghost of Rummie strikes again!



As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.


Gates might be mystified but the next head of the British Army says that it will take up to forty years!



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1 comment:

  1. Ron BeasleyAugust 13, 2009 at 11:55 AM

    During the Vietnam war a general was quoted as saying it's a lousy war but it's the only one we've got. The problem remains that war is necessary for the military industrial complex to maintain power amd make lots of money. See this post. Winning and losing are not the issue - it's war for war's sake. But as I pointed out here it can't be maintained forever.

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