Saturday, 17 May 2008
NRA's Celebration Of American Values Leadership Forum Part 1
« NRA Convetion Day 1 - Part 1 | Main | NRA's Celebration Of American Values Leadership Forum Part 2 »NRA’s Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum was the big event on day 1 of the NRA conference. I sat in the press room and watched many of the speeches. It is much easier than actually going into the hall(especially since the secret service wouldn't allow anyone to carry). Many speakers took to the floor to extol the virtues of the second amendment. If you have been around politics long enough, these speeches become a bit boring after a while. Not because the content is bad, but because politicians have a sanitized way of talking at events. Therefore I spent time walking in the exhibitor hall rather than listening to all of the speakers.
But one speaker stood out from them all. Former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell. He came out on stage wearing casual clothes which was strikingly different from all of the other speakers. He started out by apologizing for what he was wearing and then went on to tell why he had on the casual clothes. The night before he was at a local bar getting a drink and had on something with a Texas flag. Another patron of the bar with fancy tight clothes, a pencil lined beard, and a heavy foreign accent came over and asked him about the Texas flag and then went into a profanity laced rant about President Bush and America.
It turns out that Mr Luttrell took offense to the fellows words and took him out back and slapped him around a bit. "I didn't want to use my closed fist because he was just too pretty hit". Anyway, the cops came and he spent the night in jail. Which is why he was wearing the same clothes he wore the night before.
He went on to talk about his experience in Operation Red Wing and how he talked about his will and his pride in country which propelled him to keep going. It allowed him to crawl seven miles to a local Afghan tribe where he was rescued.
He said that his job is to bring "hell to the enemies until they no longer want to attack us." He talked about how politics intruded upon them and kept them from doing their job. He talked about how during one of his missions they set fire to some vehicles that had IED residue on them. Clearly the people that owned them were bad guys. Al Jazera came along and filmed the event as a sob story, and his team was grounded for two months because of it.
He also criticized the U.S. media for its coverage of the war. He claimed that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is what he gets not from the war, but from watching the news. What you see on TV over here... remember there’s so much more going on behind it,”
It was obvious that he wasn't a politician and wasn't involved in politics. His speech was not polished. In fact it was a speech by a good ole boy. One who did his job for his country and was proud of it. His performance was electric and so anti-political that it was the shining moment at the forum.
