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, November 12, 2009

Report: NSC Given Until Friday To Come Up With Afghan Withdrawal Timetable

By Steve Hynd


Spencer Ackerman has a great piece today based around a leaking staffer inside the National Security Council's deliberations on Afghnaistan strategy. The staffer noted that everyone at the NSC is annoyed with Ambassador Eikenberry for apparently leaking his own cables to Obama and confirms that the NSC has been told to go back to the drawing board and come up with less military-heavy options.


But I think Spencer buries the lede. There's this:



�They are pulling together the alternatives [Obama] requested� on refining options for resourcing the war, the NSC staffer continued. �They have until Friday to give him three new ones with withdrawal timetables.�


That's utterly new. Until now, the administration's hawks have strongly resisted any use of the T-word, trotting out retreads of Bush/Iraq era arguments that any timetable would mean the "enemy" could just wait out the U.S. Public speeches have emphasized an open-ended military commitment to Afghanistan for however long it takes.


Obama has apparently refused four options for a long war and insisted on an exit ramp to go along with any surge. It's exactly what his position was on Iraq and what eventually happened after two years and more of progressives saying that only a timetable would force a corrupt and indolent local government, with a sense of entitlement to shame a Californian teen, to step up to the plate.


Update: Reuters is quoting SecDef Gates as telling reporters that:



Obama wanted through his decision on troop levels to "signal resolve and at the same time, signal to the Afghans as well as to the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment."


Would anyone like to bet against a surge being backed by a timetable for withdrawal,at this stage?



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