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In this week's TIME Magazine, Joe Klein interviews Truman Vice President Michael Breen[http://www.trumanproject.org/about/people/staff/michael-breen] and Truman Fellows Rye Barcott[http://www.trumanproject.org/programs/fellowship/people/rye-barcott], David Callaway[http://www.trumanproject.org/programs/fellowship/people/david-w-callaway-md-mpa], Seth Moulton[http://www.trumanproject.org/programs/fellowship/people/seth-moulton], and Liz McNally[http://www.trumanproject.org/programs/fellowship/people/elizabeth-mcnally] for his article, "The New Greatest Generation," about a growing number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who are returning home and dedicating themselves to lives of public service.

From the story:


Truman Fellow Liz McNally featured on the cover of TIME's "The New Greatest Generation" story.

And Petraeus, in many ways, is their spiritual father. He has surrounded himself with military intellectuals from the service academies, like Liz McNally, a tiny West Point graduate and Rhodes scholar who did a tour in Baghdad at the age of 24, running a platoon of military police officers, and later became the general’s speech writer. Or Seth Moulton, a Marine captain who had been the Harvard class-of-2001 commencement speaker and became particularly adept at working with Iraqis to organize construction projects. “Petraeus was an amazing boss,” Moulton says. “Our mission was to defeat the military bureaucracy. We were able to build border forts, using Iraqi ¬engineers and work crews, for one-fifth the price that the American contractors were charging and in one-third the time. Our proposals went right to his desk, rather than through the bureaucracy. The only thing he demanded of us was success.”

Moulton, McNally and other activist veterans have stayed in touch since leaving the service. After years of watching them in action downrange and back home, I can pretty much spot them on sight: fit, smart, confident and strong. They look you straight in the eye when they talk; they can be funny as hell, but their language isn’t fancy. “There’s a special bond among those of us who came from privileged educational backgrounds and chose to serve,” says Moulton. “We’re a group that really wants to see America become a better place. We hate the divisive politics of the baby-boom generation. They’re running the country into the ground.” That’s another lovely thing about these veterans: they don’t mince words.

[...]

Public-Service Warriors
More than a few of the veterans who are doing extraordinary things were altruists before they joined the military. Seth Moulton, the Harvard valedictorian, decided to join the Marines because it was he “purest form of service,” even though his mother told Boston magazine she initially thought that “there was no career choice he could have made that would have made me more unhappy, except if he had chosen a life of crime.” Rye Barcott decided to prepare for his stint in the Marines by visiting the enormous Kibera slum in Kenya—he speaks Swahili—and writing his senior thesis at the University of North Carolina about ethnic differences there. Eventually, Barcott found himself simultaneously serving as an intelligence officer in Iraq and launching a non¬governmental program in Kibera, which featured interethnic soccer teams and a health clinic. Eric Greitens decided to become a Navy SEAL when he visited Rwanda after the genocide, which he believed could easily have been prevented by a careful use of military force.

[...]

“You’re a Marine Captain. Figure It Out.”
It will be decades before we find out if these veterans will prove, as Petraeus believes, the next great generation of American leaders. “It will be a phenomenal waste if 10 years from now, we turn out to be just another interest group, limiting ourselves to veterans’ issues,” says Michael Breen, vice president of the Truman National Security Project, which has provided a home in the Democratic Party for returning veterans with a desire for public service. Breen need not worry too much. The vets are just beginning to understand the value of the skills they have to offer, the amazing things they may be able to accomplish as civilians. In the coming years, people like Eric Greitens, Wes Moore and Liz McNally may run for office; an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran, or two, may someday be elected President—and he or she will bring to office the sense of grace under pressure, of purposeful leadership that comes from service in combat, an experience that none of the baby-boom Presidents have had.

For now, just listening to them talk about their experiences is thrilling. Seth Moulton returned from his last tour working for Petraeus in 2007 and did a joint master’s program at Harvard’s Business School and Kennedy School of Government. He and his friend David Callaway, a former combat surgeon who was then affiliated with the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians, were sitting together at a Truman Project conference when Callaway got word of the Haiti earthquake. Harvard wanted him to organize a team of doctors to help out. “I turned to Seth and said, ‘I need you to go down there and start organizing logistics,’” Callaway told me. “Seth said, ‘I don’t know anything about medical logistics.’ And I told him, ‘Seth, you’re a Marine captain. Figure it out.’”

Full text of the article is available here.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089337,00.html]

The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Truman National Security Project or Educational Institute.

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