Varifrank recounts a little conversation he had with some European colleagues:
Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro colleagues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:
“See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, there’s a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier…”
After which he and many of my Euro colleagues laughed out loud.
and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.
I’m afraid I was “unprofessional”, I let it loose –
“Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?
Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?
Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?
Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?
Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?
Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?
Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share.
Well spoken… well spoken indeed…
A pity you didn’t post the entire transcript. I am always looking for new words to teach my students, and I had not heard “f***nob” before.
Besides, I think that 1) the Euros featured in this conversation act, sadly, like many real life people I know, 2) a much better reply would have been to simply ask, “what would YOU do?” 3) the eloquent reply made by Varifrank fails to mention that in addition to the features he named, a super carrier also has a number of deadly weapons on board, plus the people who know how to use them and will use them if and when they are ordered to do so.
In the end, there is this whole idead of different connotations to take into account. What with (my) German background, army military related business always means war-related business first. I guess this “Franz” in that conversation makes the same connotations (however distorted those may appear to your eyes): “There is a huminitarian disaster and GWB reacts by sending in a huge and powerful killing machine.”
By asking them what they would do, Varifrank might have had a chance to make the Euros actually understand GWB’s actions… I think.
J.