Townhall...
The
Marilyn Monroe Doctrine
By Cliff May
7/14/2011
In
1957, Marilyn Monroe starred in
“The Prince and the Showgirl.” In the movie’s most memorable scene,
Monroe (as
Elsie Marina, an understudy in The Coconut Girl in 1911 London who is
soon
hobnobbing with the royals) overhears a telephone conversation (in
German – but
Elsie is from Milwaukee so she’s bilingual as well as gorgeous) about a
plot
against the Prince Regent of Carpathia, played by Laurence Olivier.
“It
is most unfortunate that you
should have heard that,” the dastardly Balkan plotter snarls. “It might
prove
exceedingly dangerous for you!”
“Dangerous?”
scoffs Elsie. “Oh, don’t
give me that. I’m an American citizen. Nobody can do anything to me!”
This
ideal of an America that is
strong, unafraid and certainly doesn’t let its enemies get away with
murder was
not just a Hollywood conceit. “The Prince and the Showgirl” was made at
London’s Pinehurst Studios. It was written by Terrence Rattigan, a
distinguished
dramatist, a graduate of Harrow and Oxford, who would be knighted by
the Queen
in 1971. Olivier, in addition to starring, produced and directed.
Fast
forward to the 1980s. Journalist
Peter Theroux is a guest at a small palace in Riyadh along with Saudi
princes
and wealthy businessmen from several Middle Eastern countries. After
supper,
they screen “The Prince and the Showgirl,” and, as recounted in
Theroux’s
marvelous travel memoir, “Sandstorm: Days and Nights in Arabia,” when
Marilyn
Monroe delivers the line quoted above, “every Arab in the room” shouts
in
unison: “Eiri fik, ya gahba!”(F*** you, bitch!”)
Fast
forward to the present. Last
week, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told
members of
the Pentagon Press Association: “Iran is very directly supporting
extremist
Shiite groups which are killing our troops. There is no question they
are
shipping high-tech weapons in there…that are killing our people. And
the
forensics prove that. …And there’s no reason … for me to believe that
they’re
going to stop that as our numbers come down.”
Did
I miss the uproar over this? Did
the cable news shows break away from the wall-to-wall Casey Anthony
coverage to
at least take note of the fact that a top American official has now
confirmed
what only a few analysts – e.g. Michael Ledeen, a scholar at the
Foundation for
Defense of Democracies – have long alleged: That Iran is not just
threatening
America – Iran is waging war against America and has been for decades.
Iran
sent its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, to slaughter U.S. Marines in
Beirut in
1993, collaborated with al-Qaeda to mass murder Americans at Khobar
Towers in
Saudi Arabia in 1996, facilitated attacks on the American troops who
brought
down Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and is now again targeting Americans in
Iraq and
Afghanistan as well.
Why
didn’t George Bush, when he was
president, make Iran pay a price for spilling American blood? Why isn’t
Barack
Obama doing so now? I’m guessing that advisors to both counseled
against
“widening” the conflict.
Elliott
Abrams, who was an advisor to
President Bush, and whose advice – I’m guessing again – often was not
taken,
blogged last week that “soon we will have a new Secretary of Defense
and a new
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and one can only hope that we will also
have a
new policy: that neither Iran nor any other government can kill
Americans with
impunity. The least we owe servicemen and women who risk their lives
for our
country is the certainty that when we know a foreign government is
trying to kill
them, we will act to stop it. If we adopted such a policy, we would
never again
have to hear a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs reveal such a set of facts
and
suggest as an American response…well, nothing.”
And,
by the way, the response need not
be boots on the ground in Iran. We could go much further than we have
to
cripple Iran’s economy. And imagine if, any time American servicemen in
Iraq or
Afghanistan were killed by an Iranian manufactured rocket, roadside
bomb or
explosively formed projectile (designed to penetrate layers of armor),
one of
the factories where those weapons were being produced was, without
fanfare,
reduced to rubble. America-haters would yell what was yelled at Marilyn
Monroe/Elsie Marina. But they’d get the message that, as a matter of
both
principle and policy, Americans don’t let their enemies get away with
killing
them.
I
can’t leave you without recalling
how “The Prince and the Showgirl” ends. In what might be seen as a
democracy
promotion effort, Elsie foils the plotters and persuades the Prince –
who,
until he met her, had no patience for “nonsense about political freedom
and
democratic rights … When will these crazy Americans grow up?” -- to
return to
Carpathia and hold a general election. Rattigan and Olivier leave the
audience wondering:
Will the Prince and the Showgirl marry? And will there be a Balkan
Spring?
Perhaps it’s time for a sequel.
Read
it at Townhall
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