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She'll never come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses. She knows she should, that it's expected of her as commander
of the mission, but still. She knows this is what Sumner meant when he objected to having a civilian leader.
She grants
him this much, he objected far more to that than to her being a woman.
Sheppard, John, is less easy to deal with, his
folder wasn't lying where it said 'doesn't take well to orders,' and yet she knows he doesn't want this command, doesn't want
any command, which makes him less troublesome than Sumner.
They, and she'll have to stop seeing of the military parts
of her command as 'they' for this to work, they think that her background makes her weak. She must be an ivory tower academic,
Georgetown and the UN. They haven't seen the reports she's read, the reports she's had to gather the data for and write, of
the evil men do in times of war, declared or undeclared. She speaks five languages and it's never enough, she has to drag
interpreters in, which hurts them, and hurts the people telling their stories to them.
She's mopped up the messes of
the world, tried to cauterise its wounds with accords and agreements.
There are no acceptable losses, not on their
side, and not on their opponents's side, Wraith not included. She doesn't know what to make of the Wraith. She has seen the
results of wars where one side are feverish with unstoppable rage, but never with unstoppable hunger. If there is a slippery
slope to understanding the idea of acceptable losses, they're probably the start of it.
Stopping the Wraith will cost
lives. She thinks that's what the military part of her command doesn't understand. She knows that there will be deaths; she
doesn't consider them acceptable.
Every time she sends a team out, and every team is hers, she wants to tell them all
to come back safely, and knows she can't, because they won't, because it will make her look weak and she needs to be strong
to keep them alive.
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