Fair Game
Dear Journal,
As a Commanding Officer, one of the greatest joys I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing is when a member of my team receives a promotion. I could not be more proud of Major Carter and her accomplishments. Normally after such promotion ceremonies, I would have treated the officer to a beer, maybe a steak, but definitely a beer. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to take Carter out for her celebration thanks to the timing of Thor's peace negotiation turned assault investigation.
I should have known it was going to be trouble from the start. Actually, we all did know there would be trouble, we just weren't sure what form the trouble would take. Daniel never ceases to amaze me. Always willing to be the diplomat, even to beings that he hates more than anything else in the galaxy. If Apophis had still been alive, and he had been part of the System Lord representative, I seriously doubt he would have been as willing a liaison as he was. Just like Teal'c could barely stand to look at Cronus, and Dr. Frasier was hard pressed to even be in the same room as Nirrti. We all have those Goa'ulds that we hate just a little more than the others. Then again, we also have those Goa'ulds that we care too much about the host to really hate the snake in their head. Klorel and Amaunet to be specific.
Me, on the other hand, I'm not so good at playing the diplomat. Even if the only System Lord to come through our gate had been Yu, who I have nothing against thus far, I don't think I could have looked at him and not thought how evil he must be. For all I know Yu could be the evilest Goa'uld of them all. Yu was the emperor of China for some time if I remember what Daniel said correctly, therefore Yu must have some evil streak to him.
Earth politics and intergalactic politics aren't that different from each other it would seem. It's all about who can bluff the others the best. Who has the best poker face. Who has the most convincing tale to tell. So far, it seems the Asgard are winning this competition. Then again, I don't think their faces can show any kind of emotion whatsoever so that must make it pretty easy. They always sound so serious; it is quite impossible to tell when they are bluffing. I do know they aren't bluffing about the unnamed enemy in their own galaxy that is seemingly more of a threat than the Goa'uld. I shudder to think what would happen if that enemy made it to the Milky Way. We'd end up fighting two wars at the same time. That kind of offense has never worked in all of Earth's history. We can only successfully focus on one enemy at a time, and even then, some battles are lost.
We've lost enough battles against the Goa'uld, it's time for us to start winning some. Daniel would say that defeating Ra, Apophis, Hathor, and Seth were all wins. He may even include exposing Nirrti as the fraud that she is as a win for us. But in my mind, all of those small victories are simply more ways of prolonging the inevitable. A win for Earth won't happen until we can go through that gate without the fear of being captured and tortured. And Cronus has promised us that will never happen. Not as long as we still use the gate.
Carter would say that's our win. If the System Lords fear us enough to consider us a threat, fear us enough to take the time and resources to capture and torture us, then we must be doing something right out there. The Goa'uld aren't afraid of anyone, except the Asgard and now us. They don't even really fear the Tok'ra. It's more like they see the Tok'ra as annoyance, but nothing to really be afraid of. The Tok'ra have spent decades fighting the System Lords, and made very, very little progress. We just entered the game, and we've already taken down four of the big ones. Well, some would call them big. Others would call them easy targets, but regardless, we took them down. We proved that the Goa'uld could be killed.
Maybe that makes us a viable threat, and maybe that's a big enough win for us, at least for now. But this war is far from over, and there are still many, many more battles to be won.
-Colonel Jack O'Neill
