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 12, 2009

Porn or Victory!

By Dave Anderson:


War should not be porn.

Richard Holbrooke argues that war in Afghanistan, or at least victory is porn-like.



�The military struggle with U.S. troops is not an open-ended event, but our civilian assistance will continue,� Holbrooke said. Stressing the interagency coordination represented by the ten officials flanking Holbrooke on the panel at Washington�s St. Regis Hotel, Holbrooke said that while the United States had to be �clear about what our national interests are,� ultimately, success would require taking a �Supreme Court test� � �We�ll know it when we see it.�


This is a great methodology for consistently changing objectives, metrics, orientations and assumptions without grounding analysis or limiting the scope of a mission.  Not having any clear idea of a desired end state means anything can be desired or nothing can be desired.  It is worse than strategic myopia in that it allows for any vision to be either victory or defeat depending on one's minimalist or maximalist goal set.


If that is the level of political goal definition that is integral to a strategic review of US interests and actions in Afghanistan, then we are truly fucked. 



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  1. MargaretAugust 27, 2009 at 9:00 PM

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