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, October 27, 2011

Do We Care?

By BJ Bjornson

Every now and again I get reminded just how much I would hate to be in President Obama�s shoes. It isn�t the big things usually, like the fact that he gets covered more negatively than the entire pack of WTFs running to oppose him, or the fact that the media treats his opponents as though they have anything constructive to add to the conversation. That kind of stuff just makes me happy that I�m not living in the U.S.

No, for me it is usually a story like this one from McClatchy, questioning whether or not Obama tried hard enough to keep U.S. troops serving in Iraq past the end of this year. Now, Obama was elected in part due to his consistency on claiming Iraq was an expensive and dangerous waste of time and critical resources (resources that he wanted to use in Afghanistan, but whatever), and there is a huge majority in the U.S. that has been wanting the troops out of Iraq for quite some time.

Now ordinarily given such starting points, the question someone would be asking is, why are we even trying to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? Unfortunately, the idea that the U.S. should maintain military bases everywhere on the globe where they once landed troops, even if mistakenly, is so ingrained that not only does the question of why on earth the U.S. would want to maintain an expensive and likely counterproductive presence in Iraq not get asked, but the White House now has to work on claiming that they did really, really try and go back on Obama�s election promise and against the wishes of the majority of the voting public to keep U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.

Honestly, there�s no way that can�t suck.  Can't we just be happy that, however it was accomplished, the American military will no longer be sending soldiers into harm's way in Iraq rather than writing an attack piece over how terrible it is that the President didn't appear to work harder to continue their ultimately worthless presence going.


Apparently we can't, which is why I'll never envy the man.



1 comment:

  1. Agreed.
    When the completion of withdrawal announcement was made criticisms were raining down as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
    My reaction was better late than never but the criticisms seemed to presume Iraqis had no say in the matter. The announcement was clear: the Iraqi parliament said "No." It made me want to yell at the critics, "What part of NO do you not get?
    The war was to replace a tyrant with representative government.
    It happened.
    They said Buh-bye...
    Get over it."

    ReplyDelete