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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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Zardari: The War Is Being Lost

By Steve Hynd


Yesterday, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari dropped what Doug Mataconis describes as a verbal "hand grenade" into the debate about the Great War On Terror (tm). In an interview with Le Monde, he said the war was already being lost.



"I believe that the international community, which Pakistan belongs to, is in the process of losing the war against the Taliban, and that is, above all, because we have lost the battle for hearts and minds," Le Monde quoted him as saying.


The Spectator describes Zardari's comment thusly: "Given his pivotal, front-seat role in proceedings, it's got to go down as one of the most significant statements on the war so far." However, that it's Zardari saying this automatically tweaks my cynicism bone. I've a feeling that it will only be a matter of days before he says that the situation is rescuable if only the West sends even more military aid money to Pakistan. If so, he'll have been right for the wrong reasons.


Doug links to a report that shows Obama's press secretary is obviously lost:



�Well, I don�t think the (US) President would agree with President Zardari�s conclusion that the war is lost. I haven�t seen the interview. I don�t know why he�s come to that conclusion,� Gibbs told reporters.


I would've thought it was obvious. Nine years in, General Petraeus' has had to issue a new set of rules for the occupying troops focussing (yet again) on the need to "secure and serve the population", the need to provide good governance and to fight corruption or abuse of power. We've been hearing these refrains since at least the beginning of the second Bush term and we're hearing them again now as if they're somehow new.


The Obama administration's only defence against the charge that Afghanistan is too FUBAR to fix is to put the PR machine into overdrive trying to convince us all that Afghan efforts are in continual "reset" - that the "real effort" has somehow "just begun". Tell it to the Taliban or the Afghan people! They know how long the war has lasted.



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1 comment:

  1. T. GreerAugust 4, 2010 at 12:32 PM

    I am with Steve Metz on this one. As he said last night:
    Zardari's warning that NATO is losing Afghanistan is like Rush Limbaugh complaining that American political discussion has become acerbic.

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