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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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Elsewhere, expeditionary militaries are discretionary

By Dave Anderson:



The Progressive Realist's, Judah Grunstein, notes that European countries are treating their expeditionary militaries and the capabilities to deploy forces 7,500 kilometers from home soil as a useful but discretionary capability that has real costs as well as real benefits.  Those costs and benefits are different in flush times than in times of austerity.



Defense News has the grim rundown: ten percent cuts in Italy on top of already planned reductions, $1.2 billion slashed annually in Germany, and reports (undenied by the Defense Ministry) of up to $6 billion over the next three years in France. According to the German defense minister, the cuts there will not be cosmetic, but will result in real reductions in capabilities and operation

Western Europe is more than capable of defending itself against any probable threat.  Defense spending above that limit is for expeditionary capacity to influence global events and situations.  As I have argued elsewhere, the politics of excluding defense spending, specifically defense spending on an expeditionary war of relatively minor importance, from cuts is untenable for most nations.

in the minds of most voting publics, Afghanistan as it is currently funded is a luxury expenditure.  Great Britain is not the first country to think about leaving Afghanistan (or Iraq) due to budget constraints, nor will it be the last.



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