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, September 1, 2010

Poland Says It Can't Afford To Be In Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd


Another coming departure from the Coalition of the Unwilling:



After his meeting with NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Wednesday evening, President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland�s involvement in Afghanistan was taking away vital funds for defence modernisation.


"The costs of operations are so significant they are having an effect on the modernization of the armed forces," Komorowski said during his trip to Brussels, Wednesday.


Poland has 2,600 troops in Afghanistan, with 400 hundred in reserve, and President Komorowski said during his recent election campaign that finding a concrete withdrawal date was an urgent policy goal.


The Dutch have already gone, Canada is to follow, Spain and Australia are thinking about it. The U.S. has convinced the new set of poodles in London to stay until 2015 no matter what the vast majority of the British populace think but Cameron/Clegg will be hurt by it at the next election. In any case, NATO is in tatters now that the Dutch have proven that it's Charter is not a "stay the course" document.


Meanwhile, 2010 is already the most deadly year yet for US troops in Afghanistan, with four months of the year still to go.


As allies leave, US troops will have to take up the slack and more will be killed. Unless, of course, Obama takes the hint from his allies and over 60% of US voters and heads for the exit too.


America can't afford Afghanistan either, in these times of unemployment and economic depression. But the Pentagon has a $547 million PR budget.



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