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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Monday, February 28, 2011

US readying for stupid intervention in Libya?

By Steve Hynd


It's difficult to find analysts who think armed intervention in Libya would be a good idea, with even most warfare welfarists backing off from talk of invasion or hard-to-implement "no-fly" zones.


There are, however, some notable exceptions. Neoliberal Iraq cheerleader Michael O'Hanlon and neocon Iraq stovepiper Paul Wolfowitz have combined to argue that the US should be ready to take "action of a more forceful sort". Inveterate hawk Hillary Clinton has said that �nothing is off the table".


And the Pentagon is repositioning forces just in case:



Defense Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan says Pentagon planners are working on various options and contingency plans as the violence aimed at overthrowing the government continues in the North African nation. Lapan told reporters Monday that as part of that planning, the Pentagon is repositioning some naval and air forces.


The U.S. has a regular military presence in the Mediterranean Sea and farther to the south has two aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf area.



Libyan tweeters keep saying they don't want American intervention, that they still remember Iraq, that they want to handle the situation themselves. But America is setting ready to intervene anyway. What is this, Animal House? "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part" and we're just the guys to do it!


Update: McClatchie reports that an aircraft carrier is being moved to sit off Libya's coast and quotes an anonymous official as saying that consideration of imposing a no-fly zone �has picked up a little speed.�



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2 comments:

  1. emptyFebruary 28, 2011 at 5:44 AM

    Steve,
    You might wish to look at Juan Cole's posting here for why the US may want to intervene militarily. Not that it wouldn't be stupid - but stupidity has hardly ever been a hindrance, has it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BatocchioMarch 2, 2011 at 5:42 AM

    Has John Bolton jumped on this, too? If not, he'll surely get around to it. For Bolton, rvery time is a good time to a foreign country.

    ReplyDelete

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