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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Sunday, September 6, 2009

A Friedman Unit Later, Friedman Finally Gets It

By Steve Hynd


Back on March 9th, when President Obama laid out his strategy for Afghanistan, there were those among us who said that the plan called for a nation building adventure even if Obama was saying involvement would be laser-focussed on preventing Al Qaeda from using Afghan lands as safe havens.


Four months later, it had already become obvious that the White House and Pentagon were embarked on nation building as the raison de etre of the escalation in Afghanistan, no matter what Obama might have said about that not being what the plan was all about.


Six months later, Thomas Friedman has finally caught up.



We are transforming our mission � from baby-sitting to adoption. We are going from a limited mission focused on baby-sitting Afghanistan � no matter how awful its government � in order to prevent an Al Qaeda return to adopting Afghanistan as our state-building project.


...It may still be worth doing, but one thing I know for sure, it must be debated anew. This is a much bigger undertaking than we originally signed up for. Before we adopt a new baby � Afghanistan � we need to have a new national discussion about this project: what it will cost, how much time it could take, what U.S. interests make it compelling, and, most of all, who is going to oversee this policy?


What took you so long, Thom? And at what point will you admit that the White House and the Pentagon - enabled by your own D.C. Village set of think-tank and punditry hawks - has tried very hard not to have that debate and to slip all this past the American public this last six months?


Update: George Will is standing by his opposition to escalation, citing a letter from former Marine Commandant Gen. Chuck Krulak in his support and saying there will be plenty other senior military figures who support a drawdown.


Is that what changed, Thom? That a conservative and Villager said that adding troops will simply increase the problems of being an occupying force rather than just a bunch of DFH's saying it?



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2 comments:

  1. AlexSeptember 6, 2009 at 6:11 AM

    So now Obama is substituting Afganistan for Iraq?? New face, same old b*llsh*t!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. fledermausSeptember 6, 2009 at 5:36 PM

    "What took you so long, Thom?"
    He had to wait until a democrat was in the White House

    ReplyDelete

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