Moulton ’01 Works to Build Iraq’s Free Press

Lt. Seth W. Moulton ’01 has seen the horrors of war firsthand. A marine under his command was seriously injured by artillery fire during the fight for Baghdad last April. “They didn’t think he’d make it, but he did,” Moulton said.

Still, Moulton told congregants at Memorial Church yesterday at morning prayers, “I want to go back to Iraq.”

He may soon have the opportunity.

At the end of this month, Moulton will embark upon a second tour of duty in the Middle East, and he said that “there’s a very good chance that...we will head straight back to Iraq.”

In contrast to American soldiers who have recently garnered attention through their infamous deeds, Moulton—as host of a widely broadcasted Iraqi television program—has become a popular figure in the war-torn nation.

‘A BIT OF A CELEBRITY’

Moulton was deployed to Kuwait in January 2003 and fought with the First Marine Regiment in the attack on the Iraqi capital. “Once the ‘war,’ as we knew it, was declared over,” Moulton said, his unit moved south to the town of Hillah.

There, Moulton helped Iraqis establish a free media in the wake of Baathist rule. Along with one other American officer, he oversaw Iraq’s largest-circulation newspaper. Moulton also managed a television channel and a radio station.

“The concept of calling into a radio station, voicing your opinion and being heard live on the air was something Iraqis had never heard of,” Moulton said in an interview.

At one point, Moulton said, “I went on TV myself to do a couple of announcements, and—much to our surprise—I was very popular.”

Soon, Moulton was—in his own words—“a little bit of a celebrity” in the region. He said that autograph-seekers routinely approached him and his translator as they walked down the streets of Baghdad.

Last summer, Moulton launched his own TV show, which he describes as an Arabic hybrid of CNN’s “NewsNight with Aaron Brown” and CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

“I was still a marine working for our cause. I wasn’t openly critical of the U.S.,” Moulton said. Instead, he interviewed ordinary Iraqis to gauge popular opinion and investigated local issues such as electricity shortages.

“Iraqi society just thrives on rumors,” Moulton said. “One of the most important things our little show did is combat the rumor mill and get the truth out there.”

But the show faced a series of logistical challenges.

“You have no idea how hard it is to put on a half-hour TV show three times a week, especially when you have one computer and the power is on about 50 percent of the time,” he said.

“We crashed every PC in town,” he said. Ultimately, Moulton convinced his commander to let him travel to Kuwait in order to acquire Macintosh computers for video editing.

“Being in Iraq is a miserable experience as far as the day-to-day living conditions of American servicemen and women,” Moulton said, “It’s hot as hell.”

Moulton spent the nights sleeping on the dirt floor of an old pistol factory.

“Americans would be surprised by what the Iraqi standard is for a quiet night,” he said. “They’d be up all night because people are shooting guns.

“You have a wedding party and people shoot off AK-47s in celebration,” Moulton said. “So people just have a different standard for danger.”

But Moutlon also said his show gave him the chance to tour Iraq’s archaeological treasures.

“Iraq is in many ways a beautiful country,” he said.

Moulton’s television show lapsed last year when he returned to Camp Pendleton in California. The Polish troops who took over in Hillah “didn’t understand how important it was to have a media campaign,” he said.

As Americans’ faith in the Iraqi effort sags, Moulton remains optimistic. “I even believe the larger mission has the potential, or at least a chance now, of succeeding,” he said. “Its success would mean an awful lot for peace in the Middle East...and the rest of the world.”

But, Moulton said, “the politics don’t matter at all. Quite frankly, this could be 1969 and Vietnam—in the midst of what is arguably the worst foreign policy mistake this nation has ever made—and I would still want to go back.”

“It’s about your friends,” he said. “I have a platoon of 35 young men...‘the grunts,’ on the front lines wherever the Marines go.”

“My job is to take responsibility for these men. It’s not like being responsible for a fund or an Internet company,” he said.

‘A BURGER, A BEER AND A GIRLFRIEND’

Three years ago, upon being chosen to deliver the English oration at the 2001 Commencement, Moulton told The Crimson, “Just because our generation doesn’t have an obvious cause or challenge, like a war, doesn’t mean we should not aspire to do great things in the world.”

In his speech at graduation, Moulton quoted the inscription on the inside of Dexter Gate: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

“It’s about being there and doing your part, right alongside the next guy, and not letting someone else go in your place,” Moulton said at Memorial Church yesterday.

Moulton decided to join the Marines in 2001—before the Sept. 11 attacks—after long conversations with Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes.

In an interview yesterday, Gomes recalled telling Moulton: “Everyone has their vocation and a calling in life, and the great trick is to find out what it is and to pursue it.”

Gomes said he never explicitly advised Moulton to join the military, but urged Moulton “to fulfill what his own destiny and vision for service was.”

“I just really took seriously what Peter Gomes had to say about service,” Moulton said.

As an undergraduate, Moulton played the organ at Memorial Church and was an active member of the campus congregation.

“But I wasn’t like church geek, by any means,” he said.

Moulton was a physics concentrator in Currier House and rowed crew for two years.

When he returned from Iraq last September, Moulton said, he did not want to face the “predictable, repeated and unanswerable” questions from friends about Iraq. “I wanted a burger, a beer and a girlfriend, and was far more interested in hearing why Nomar was in a slump, how Martha had gone from the kitchen to the dog house, and whether or not Larry Summers was still president of Harvard.”

But in the last few days before he returns to the Middle East, Moulton, a native of Marblehead, Mass., is sharing his Iraq experiences with Harvard.

Moulton will again speak at Memorial Church on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. as part of the Faith and Life Forum.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.