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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Not a bad idea

By Dave Anderson:

Defense in the National Interest is pointing out the obvious; the critical interest for the United States in Afghanistan is the prevention of "far enemy" terrorist strikes.  Everything after that is a secondary or tertiary goal.  And those goals have minimal real importance to American security or American power. 

Retired Army COL Doug Macgregor�s latest take on what we should do in Afghanistan (500 KB PPT):

The best we can do is withdraw our
forces with the publicly stated understanding that how the Afghans
govern themselves is their business.

However, if the Afghans harbor anyone�al
Qaeda or anyone else who threatens the United States and its allies�we
must state clearly we will annihilate those who threaten us without
concern for the welfare of those Afghans who harbor them.



We really should not care who controls the Korengal Valley timber smuggling racket or the Kunar Valley water and irrigation system except if those resources are used to support inter-continental strikes against US targets.  We know that the US military believes that the overwhelming majority of the people who are shooting at the US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan are doing so because of local issues; namely the foreigners invaded and disrupted some type of previously favorable local arrangement and/or killed/humiliated family and friends. 

Minimal goals with credible threats and capacity will be far more achievable at far lower costs than maximal goals pursued incoherently. 



Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)