Pancakes After Mosul

In October 2005, a plane filled with soldiers touched down at McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. Sergeant Carl Westlind stepped onto the tarmac, then hopped onto a bus with his platoon, which headed to Fort Lewis nearby. The soldiers marched over to a gym on the base, where their families were waiting.

“Oh hell yeah,” Westlind recalled thinking, in a phone interview earlier tonight. “Oh hell yeah.”

They arrived at the gym, and a huge shutter door opened. It was a Hollywood moment, he said. Immediately he saw his mom, a housewife who loves gardening, in the crowd of eager parents. His commander gave a brief, congratulatory speech, then dismissed the soldiers for the weekend.

Westlind, 25, a member of the Charlie Company Styker Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, had spent the past year in Mosul, a city in Iraq then at the focal point of a U.S. counterinsurgency effort. He described his mission as “police work,” pursuing “bombmakers and guys that chopped off heads.” Now, he was back in the United States.

Westlind raced to his mom and gave her a huge hug.

“I’m home,” he told her.

Westlind spent some time in his hometown of Longview, Washington, an industrial and logging town of about 50,000, forty or so miles north of Portland, Oregon. He got a good night’s sleep. He ate at his favorite restaurant, The Pancake House. He had a lot of money saved up, so he considered buying two four-wheel drive ATVs. He decided to save his money.

He also reunited with as many people as he could—his dad, a lineman who lives in Alaska, his girlfriend at the time (the relationship never worked out), old high school friends. Many of them, he said, asked “spectator questions.”

“‘Blow anybody up?’ No,” he said. “‘Did you kill anybody?’ Nope.”

In Mosul, Westlind stayed with his reconnaissance platoon in an air-conditioned metal container at a Forward Operating Base on the edge of the city, next door to a mortar platoon. It was “one big old family,” he said.

On one of their last patrols, Westlind's team was was caught in a vicious firefight and a soldier almost died. But in general, Westlind said his team faced little combat. The resistance came randomly, he said—once in a while, a few “jackasses” would drive by in a car and fire a few shots at the soldiers.

“I hear the word 'war,' I think of WWII. D Day," he said. “Honestly, it didn’t really seem like war."

In a year, he only fired his weapon once. Late one night, he was heading down a road in a convoy back to base. An Improvised Explosive Device erupted, hitting the truck ahead of his. Everyone dismounted from their vehicles and scanned the area. After making out what he thought were two insurgents in the distance, a soldier started firing a 50-caliber machine gun. Westlind followed suit, pumping grenades from his Mark-19 in the same direction.

He got a message on the radio: “Westlind, you’re right on top of him!” He continued firing a barrage of grenades. But after the troops scanned the target area, they found nothing.

Westlind is still not sure if he killed anyone, but since his team never recovered any bodies after the incident, he tells people that he did not.

“If I did,” he said, “they were obliterated.”

Not much had changed in Westlind’s hometown, he said. One friend looked a tad older. There was a new supermarket.

Westlind said he had not changed much, either—he experienced no anxiety attacks, nightmares, or other Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-related complications.

But he still has memories of his time in Mosul.

Around Christmas time in 2004, a suicide bomber found his way into one platoon’s chow hall. He blew himself up, killing 19 soldiers. Every so often, the image of one victim returns to Westlind’s mind: “A fairly heavy-set soldier staring straight into the sky, starting to turn a little bit blue.”

Westlind loved the men of his own platoon. With them he had spent three years training in California, Louisiana and eastern Washington, and then serving in Iraq.

“I consider every one of them my brother,” he said. “Some of them I would consider my dad.”

“We all came back home alive,” he added.

He regrets not collecting all of their phone numbers after returning from Iraq.

Not long after Westlind redeployed, he was posted as a recruiter at a station in Lynwood, Washington. Most people who entered the office to join the Army were either felons, he said, or “overblown medical cases.” A man once came in who had wires in his hands, pins in his knees and a plate in his head. These types were all summarily rejected.

Westlind also recruited at Lynwood, Meadowdale and Scriber Lake High Schools. He had trouble finding new recruits.

“‘Oh, heck no. I hate Bush. I hate the war.’ Blah blah blah,” he said. “Those are two things I just can’t help.”

Last May, he transferred out of the recruiting job and moved to Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas. By the end of his recruiting tenure, he said, “I put in zero people.”

In a few months, Westlind will leave the United States again. He is now training for a deployment to Afghanistan. He is not sure when he leaves, or where he will go once he gets there. He is happy that he will go there instead of Iraq, he added, since Afghanistan is statistically facing less violence than Iraq.

Westlind will get married before he deploys. He met his 32-year-old fiancée when she worked on ships for the Navy and built tug-boats—“stuff that big boys do,” he said. He hopes that she will be prepared for their separation once he deploys. He is optimistic, since she knows the ways of military family life.

“Luckily for me,” he said, “she’s an Army brat.”

Photo: Sgt. Carl Westlind with the Strykers in Mosul, Iraq

A Senseless Me

At the moment, I want to be like Gary Karp
just a picture on a website or a sticker on a wall
so anyone can do to me what they please
and all I’d do is be.
I wish for a wilderness around me,
but to live as nothing, merely this piece of paper
fodder for imaginations, but nothing still.
Of all my surroundings, I would smell and taste, see and hear
and best of all feel nothing.
For who would I be then, but me
and only me?

Am I Forever Cursed to Drink the Foul Soup Mac Serves?

I came across an old friend today - a compilation by the band that predated Xiu Xiu, Ten In The Swear Jar. I slipped the CD into my MacBook's narrow mouth.

Needless to say I was excited to hear the classics "San Jose Fight Song" and "Hot Karl." Those are two of my favorite songs. But I felt sick when the machine started coughing and wheezing, the CD struggling to spin smoothly. I felt a deep pain inside of me. Finally I felt that my whole world had flipped upside down.

It all started a few days ago, when one after the other my computer ejected several CDs from its mouth. Now it looks official: iTunes downloads are fine, but my computer no longer accepts CDs.

Tonight is a sad night.

Don't Blame Musharraf, Blame Democracy

Pakistani President/Commander in Chief Pervez Musharraf is the latest to pull off the classic trick of the modern age: invoking democracy to justify the termination of democracy.

Musharraf has announced to his people, in a fog of legal euphemism, that he will run the nation how he pleases and subjugate any critics, in order to quell any further humiliation of he and his supporters and to present a "unified" front against the bands of Islamic fanatics encroaching upon Pakistan's major cities.

"WHEREAS the Government is committed to the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law and holds the superior judiciary in high esteem, it is nonetheless of paramount importance that the Honourable Judges confine the scope of their activity to the judicial function and not assume charge of administration."

"I General Pervez Musharraf, Chief of the Army Staff, proclaim Emergency throughout Pakistan...I hereby order and proclaim that the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall remain in abeyance...This Proclamation shall come into force at once."

Check out Musharraf's "Proclamation of Emergency" here. You will find fine examples of totalitarian double-speak.

The reality of the situation - police storming the streets and the Supreme Court, phone lines being jammed and independent television stations being shut down - is of course dire. I tend to think that such acts are as much control as marketing: to grab for power and simultaneously present a new, alternate reality.

What will the terrorists, the enemy here, think? That Musharraf is a brave and fearsome leader who is so bold as to buck the will of the Bush Administration, and who will certainly reunify the military? Has he breathed fear into their hearts?

Or will they see Musharraf as he is seen by the majority of Pakistan's democracy advocates, and now the international community - an out of control flip-flopper, so weak and starved of support that he must declare "emergency" in the country he leads?

Musharraf presumably intends to crush the violent Al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers with impunity, no longer hindered by the rule of law. He intends to crush the opposition movement, largely moderate critics who are pushing for the return to democratic law. But surely this newfound "emergency," this pronouncement of chaos, will embolden all of their causes. Surely, in his attempt to enforce a false sense of unity, Musharraf will only birth more and more enemies.

Moving Day

We've been in Bushwick a year already?

I asked the burly man with glasses at the 99 cent store down the street for some boxes. He shook his head.

"Last night was box night around here," he said.

"Fuck," I said.

"Yes, you are," he retorted, with a smile and a giggle.

I managed to grab a big honker from one of those stores that sells used refrigerators and other large electronic appliances. Other than that, this neighborhood is dry.

Time to break out the garbage bags!

Iraq Watch: The Lynching Law

Installment #3 for the New School Free Press runs in tomorrow's issue.

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A roving squad of unlawful combatants rampaged through Baghdad's Nisour Square and slaughtered at least 17 people on September 16.

Although the attack kicked off three government investigations, none of the unlawful combatants—militants that are not identified by national insignia or operate under the military chain of command, but engage in offensive activities during war time—were charged with a crime. The U.S. government has not even rounded these killers up and flown them to Guantanamo Bay for the standard series of torturous interrogations.

This time, the United States knows these attackers all too well: decked out in beige vests and toting assault rifles, the killers were operating under a government contract paid for by the State Department, and taking a group of U.S. diplomats along for the ride.

Military law experts are wondering whether these contractors fall under the same legal status as Guantanamo Bay's detainees. "If we hire people and direct them to perform activities that are direct participation in hostilities, then at least by the Guantanamo standard, that is a war crime," Michael N. Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and an international law professor at the Naval War College, recently told the Los Angeles Times.

But the contractors are above the law. Paul Bremer III, once the envoy to Iraq, granted all U.S. contractors immunity from Iraqi laws in 2004. Unlike contractors that work for the U.S. military, those that work for the State Department cannot be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

When Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Bush Administration ratified the invented term "illegal enemy combatant" to describe anti-American terrorists on which the government intended to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques." That day, I lost my faith in America's rule of law.

This act permits the government to detain anyone for as long it deems necessary, so interrogators can interrogate the detainee without issuing a charge or granting the detainee access to a lawyer. In other words, "illegal enemy combatant" is denied the rights of any "prisoner of war" under any kind of national or international law.

Unlike our combatant contractors in Iraq, then, America promises "illegal enemy combatants" the punishment of institutionalized lynching.

Recently, the House approved a bill to place U.S. contractors under the legal purview of American criminal law. But the law would not work retroactively, and it still has to face passage by the Senate. Thus, the killers in Nisour Square are free to return home after their contracting tenure and go on with their lives in peace.

In America, rule by law has become the freedom of choice. Some enemy combatants are guilty of murder but legally innocent. Others are guilty of terrorism until proven innocent. As judge, jury and executioner, American officials get to pick the combatant's fate.

As Student Population Skyrockets, More Freshmen Are Leaving Lang

This article runs in the October 29 issue of The New School Free Press.

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Sophomore Geoff Kim has a year to go at Eugene Lang College before he transfers, he hopes, to the San Francisco Art Institute.

Kim, a 19-year-old from the Bay Area in California with an interest in conceptual art, decided to attend Lang "to be as far away from California as possible," and to pursue the seminar experience of a small liberal arts college. But he cannot afford Lang's $30,660 a year in tuition. Also, he said he was "surprised" by the classroom experience.

"People were not up to par with their writing skills," he said in a phone interview about his classes last year. During class discussions, he added, "A lot of people just talked a lot of bullshit."

Kim's misgivings point to one of Lang's most persistent problems: the high proportion of freshman who leave after their first year. According to Amos Himmelstein, an Assistant Dean at Lang, a staggering average of 32 per cent, or one out of three students, left after their first year over the past two school years. Between Fall 2006 and Fall 2007, he said, referring to a statistical analysis, 75 out of 283 incoming freshmen left after their first year.

"There were certainly more than we expected," Jon White, the Director of Academic Advising at Lang, said. "We aren't in a position of making gains any longer."

At 1,291 heads, the Lang student population is now more than double the size it was in 2001, and The New School plans to boost the college's population even further. Administrators worry that Lang's attrition rates may grow if the college cannot sustain the population size with more faculty, classrooms and student space.

In September, Lang officials formed the Retention and Attrition Task Force, a fact-finding committee composed of 10 faculty members and officials from the advising, admissions and dean's offices, to get a grip on the phenomenon of freshmen departures and offer some remedies.

Actually finding those statistics is difficult, administrators said, because students can leave for a variety of reasons, including family, health or financial emergencies.

But anecdotal evidence has given the task force members some idea of drop-outs' woes.

Mark Larrimore, a task force member and the Director of First Year Studies, another initiative set up to address the freshmen exodus—and who encouraged freshmen to email him at larrimom@newschool.edu—said some students leave because they were not prepared for the seminar-style classes.

"They say, 'Wait a minute, I don't like this,'" Larrimore said.

Even if the student knows what they are getting into at Lang, he added, they might leave because they are overwhelmed by the city.

"They come to New York and get freaked out," he added.

In these cases, he said, there is not much an advisor can do—students are better off finding the college that suits their needs, or take some time off trying to figure out what they want to do with their life.

"We don't want to force people to stay here," he added.

Already the administration is working on this issue. At open houses to recruit students, according to Nicole Curvin, the Director of Admissions at Lang, the school has begun to put on mock seminar classes so candidates know what is expected of them.

But freshmen also leave, Larrimore said, because Lang "is not living up to its end of the bargain." Advisors and administrators said that students can find the college too disorganized, other students too unprepared, roommates too difficult to live with, class sizes too large, or classes fill up too quickly.

Kim decided to transfer out this semester in large part because the college is too expensive, and his peers did not seem academically qualified enough to attend the school.

Last year—"by chance," he said—Kim took a number of religious studies courses. He also took a post-modern poetry class and the first-year writing seminar. Since Lang is well known for its writing department, which covers fiction, poetry, nonfiction and journalism, he expected students to have good writing skills.

"That was not the case," he said.

Lang advisors said that some students also feel that the Lang community is not diverse enough.

"Freshmen and sophomores have expressed the feeling of being uncomfortable in what they've referred to as a 'vanilla institution,'" Brandon Graham, an academic advisor, wrote over email. Some students, he said, are concerned that over half of the students at the college are white.

Over the past few years White has worked with Lang's Diversity Committee, composed of faculty and administrators, to recruit more faculty and students of color, and to develop programs and curricula that more adequately address issues of ethnic diversity.

Nicole Curvin, the director of admissions at Lang and a member of the task force, said that the admissions office is focused on recruiting students from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Five admissions officers, she said, have traveled to public schools and community colleges in the New York City area, around the country, and even to Asia and Africa, to diversify the student population.

Another reason for the attrition spike could be that Lang is becoming too overcrowded, since the student population has more than doubled over the past five years. In 2001, according to that year's New School Fact Book, the student population was 588.

The population surge appears not to have affected the number of senior and junior year students who leave the college. From Spring 2003 to Fall 2007, Himmelstein said, the school's average attrition rate for all of its students has been an average of 12.5 per cent. This is an improvement from Spring 2002 to Fall 2002, when attrition was at 17 per cent.

"So we're doing better," Himmelstein said.

The attrition rate for freshmen has also improved. Between 2002 and 2004, average attrition rates hovered around the mid-twenty percentile. But between Fall 2005 and Fall 2007, the average freshmen class attrition grew to 32 per cent, two points shy of its level in 1998-2001.

"We just got a little worse," Himmelstein added.

Over the past five years, the university administration has focused on building the university's undergraduate class. Tuition, health insurance and dorm costs bring in 84% of the university's revenues, according to a presentation last semester by Nancy Steir, Vice President for Budget and Planning.

Administrators said that bringing in more undergrads will help fund a number of construction projects and academic initiatives, like hiring more full-time faculty and developing university-wide programs, which have been championed by the New School President Bob Kerrey and Provost Ben Lee, who oversees the academic initiatives at the university.

Securing financing for these projects is contingent on increased revenues.

"The [university] administration has got this business model," Larrimore, the task force member, said. "They want the revenue."

Himmelstein said that Provost Ben Lee has tossed around the idea of boosting Lang's population to 2,000 by 2014.

Curvin, the Lang admissions director, said the college has not lowered its admissions standards to bring in more students. The college, she said, is gaining national recognition. Over the past two years, she said, Lang received 50 per cent more applications than the year before. Two admissions officers read every application and professors often offer their own expertise. So the admissions office has been able to accommodate the demand for a larger student body.

"We're trying to maintain the soul of Eugene Lang College," Curvin said, "while also working with university requirements and things that they're planning at the university level."

Despite these plans, Lang lacks enough real estate to provide offices for all of its faculty members and enough community space for Lang students to mill around, study, or hold club meetings.

The administration intends to tear down 65 5th Ave. this summer and begin construction on a new, 18-story building. This will lead to even greater space crunch over the next several years.

Members of the Retention and Attrition Task Force worry that students will suffer if student population increases while the construction begins.

"There's no room to grow, unless they manage to somehow pull classes out of the air," Larrimore said. "I think the next two years are going to be hairy."