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, July 29, 2010

A Bloody, Drawn Out Endgame In Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd


There's a new video out from filmaker Sean Smith, courtesy of Guardian Films. They describe it thusly:



As the war in Afghanistan enters its final chapter, Sean Smith's brutal, uncompromising film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood.


Today, Joe Biden:



"We are in Afghanistan for one express purpose ... the al Qaeda that exists in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.


"We are not there to nation-build. We are not out there deciding we are going to turn this into a Jeffersonian democracy and build that country. We made it clear, we are not there for 10 years," he said.


So if we're not nation building what the hell should we call it, Joe? There are over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. We're paying for the Afghan army and police. We're meddling in corrupt Afghan politics. Oh, and we're wasting countless billions of dollars on "aid" projects which are neither what the Afghans themselves asked for nor all that effective! Maybe we should just call it what it is - colonialism.


And this colonialism is to continue for at least another five years, even if it won't be ten. For what, Joe? Al Qaeda are in a different bloody country, one we're making kissy-face with while it's intelligence agency arranges the deaths of our soldiers!


This movie shows the truth of the Endgame in Afghanistan - several more years of insanity, at a cost of lives and dollars, so that the Obama administration and its allies can save some face and prop up a client state which probably doesn't deserve propping up. Watch it.



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