Cooks, bakers, war makers

I'm back home, and living is good. I'm sleeping in, eating lots of Popsicles, and because I need money, I'm working at my family's restaurant.\nFor the four years of high school, I was a waitress (a good one, too). But now, they don't need a waitress. They need a cook -- and this has "bad idea" written all over it.\nI haven't begun yet, but I'm going into it knowing they can't really fire me unless I screw up on a monumental level. This is a comforting feeling -- this nice sense of non-accountability. There are few other jobs that offer this -- maybe a college professor with tenure, a nun or a defense secretary of a huge and powerful country. \nIn a recent The New York Times article, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying he wouldn't resign if "people try to make a political issue out of it." A political issue? Isn't this a purely political issue?\nI know he's referring to partisan bickering and the like, but Rumsfeld has known about the abuses in Iraqi prisons since January. That's five months prisoners were being stripped naked, beaten and photographed on the end of leashes. \nAnd he has taken responsibility.\n"If there was a failure, it was me," he said. \nIt was a monumental mistake, he admitted, but in Iraq as a whole, he said, "I am convinced that we are doing exactly what ought to be done."\nPresident Bush has condemned the actions of the soldiers, but says he will continue to support Rumsfeld. \nIgnoring some of the bare-bone facts about the war, is a system allowing or tolerating human rights abuses for five months anything other than fatally flawed? We're trying to re-establish an Iraqi justice system, and as one of the most powerful nations in the world, America should set the precedent. \nBut we don't. At home, we still execute minors -- the only other country in the world besides Somalia to do so. Abroad, we're pulling stunts like this, providing the country with gruesome photos of soldiers humiliating cowering prisoners.\nHow, then, are we setting any kind of example for a country still judicially, on its knees? I know this kind of "persuasion" is sanctioned by the military, and I know intelligence-gathering is an important part of fighting any war. \nBut we're America, for cryin' out loud. \nWe should be setting a shining example -- especially in the wake of the rest of the world's feelings about our invasion of Iraq. These abuses and photos just don't help. \nAt my job as a cook, I can't be fired unless I screw up monumentally. For example, burning a whole oven full of pies or setting the kitchen on fire. Rumsfeld has burned down the whole restaurant, half the town and most of the inhabitants and then waited five months to tell people there was a fire. He shouldn't run to his summer home in Hyannis with this tail between his legs but should step down or be shunted sideways into a lower-profile position.\nHe isn't personally responsible, and my anger at him isn't a condemnation of the men and women serving in the military in Iraq. It's a condemnation of his attitude toward the situation and the fact that it took him five months to do something about it.\nI'm the first to admit we still need the man -- he knows what is going on in Iraq. But should the last word come from a man who allowed something like this to happen? \nI don't think so.