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, September 16, 2010

New Afghan Offensive: Marjah Redux?

By Steve Hynd


It's deja vu all over again as the US military perfects it's mole-whacking skills in Afghanistan at a cost to you, the taxpayers, of about $6 billion a month.


There's a new offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Zhari district, West of Kandahar, the so-called "heart of Darkness" where US troops tried back in February to clear insurgents with markedly little success.


The trouble is, there's remarkably few Taliban popping their heads above ground in this "Heart of ZOMG Darkness!" to get offensive over. US forces are reported to be meeting "surprisingly little initial resistance" after predicting a bloody fight.


So far, it's very reminiscent of Marjah, where US commanders expected an intitially heavy resistance and got far less than expected - but where Taliban fighters re-infiltrated the area later to make General mcChrystal's predictions of successfully opening a "government in a box" there a sick joke.


I wonder if ISAF has a plan to counter the relatively successful Taliban tactics used in Marjah (relatively successful compared to losing a stand-up fight, certainly)?



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