America's Best Leaders

They have been called upon to serve in bloody and complicated wars on two fronts, many for more than half of their short careers. As a result, lieutenants and captains often have more combat experience than the generals who command them. "They are wise beyond their years," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said about junior officers in an address this year to the Army War College. "We owe them our attention and our time." He urged their superiors to listen to them and called upon junior officers to question their superiors as well.

And they have. Indeed, the experience of junior officers has occasionally created strained relationships with senior leadership. Many have been frustrated by what they view as a lack of accountability at the highest levels of leadership. "It has created some tension," says Nathaniel Fick, author of One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer and a platoon leader in Iraq in the spring of 2003. "A private who loses a rifle gets into more trouble than a general who loses a war."

Much more at US News and World Report.