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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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Back To Whack-A-Mole In Afghanistan?

By Steve Hynd


Official reports of Operation Tor Shezad, the latest British offensive in the helmand province of Afghanistan, say it is going well, in that they haven't found many Taliban yet.



The operation, which translates as "black prince", started with soldiers being dropped from Chinook helicopters under cover of darkness on Friday.


The troops, spearheaded by 1st Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, then moved in to clear compounds and establish patrol bases in the area.


They have seized large quantities of IEDs and bomb making equipment as they moved through the area. No casualties have been reported so far and there has been only limited contact with the Taliban.


An MoD spokesman said: "Operation Tor Shezada is progressing very well. Quantities of IEDs have been recovered and shuras (meetings) have been held with village chiefs in an attempt to offer reassurance."


The point of "Black Prince" - named after a British royal who was notorious for burning villages and cruelty to commoners, go figure - is to clear a suspected 200 or so Taliban from the village of Sayedebad after NATO forces failed to do so in Operation Moshtarak last year. The village is apparently a key crossing point between Pakistan and Afghanistan.


But it sounds like the Taliban aren't standing and fighting - much like in the Marjah offensive earlier this year. That was where McChrystal's "government in a box" proved to be just so many foam peanuts. The Taliban swiftly returned and promised to do the same elsewhere:



One of the people I interviewed was Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan (his new autobiography is a worthwhile read).


We were talking about the Kandahar offensive (sorry, process) after the interview, which elicited a laugh from Zaeef. He held out his right hand to signify the US troops pushing into Kandahar, then drew a semicircle in the air to symbolize the Taliban. "They will not find us in Kandahar. We will go around them and attack them from behind."


This is the point where the COIN "clear, hold and build" doctrine falls apart. The Afghan national security forces are nowhow capable of the "hold" bit and the Taliban are quite happy to give NATO an illusion of "clear", but only a temporrary illusion.



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