McMaster to Valley Forge Military grads: "Humanity needs you to lead and to serve."

Editor's note: Story has been updated to correct John Church's rank and title with the school.

It was a homecoming of sorts for Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump's national security adviser, who gave the commencement address Saturday for 60 graduating cadets at Valley Forge Military Academy.

McMaster is a 1980 graduate of the academy and his fondness for the school seemingly has not flagged over the years.

"I am happy for you because of what lies ahead for you; what you have learned here has prepared you for what is ahead," McMaster told the graduates and some 200 friends and relatives gathered at the school's parade grounds in Wayne.

McMaster is a celebrated battlefield commander – he was a key architect of the troop surge strategy of President George W. Bush that ultimately defeated the Iraq insurgency – and a widely respected military historian whose book on the Vietnam War, Dereliction of Duty, described the failures of U.S. military commanders to confront civilian military leaders when their strategies had unraveled.

The Roxborough native did the same during the Iraq war, voicing concern that Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had failed to adjust tactics against the jihadist insurgency.

In recent months, McMaster has emerged as a key defender of President Trump. When the Washington Post reported in May that Trump had inappropriately disclosed details of an emerging ISIS plot to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, McMaster held a news briefing to assert that the president's actions were defensible .

"What the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leader with whom he is engaged," McMaster said.

McMaster, 54, gave only passing reference to pressing global security problems and Washington controversies on Saturday. Col. John C. Church, president of the academy and college, said McMaster had driven with his security detail to the school that morning from Washington, and wanted only to share time with the newly minted graduates and their relatives, not hash over problems of war and terrorism and politics.

"As we look across the world today, we see some huge challenges," McMaster told the preparatory school graduates. "In the Middle East, what we see is a humanitarian catastrophe. The threat of North Korea is significant. We took a holiday from history for a while in the 1990s. Great power competition has reasserted itself."

But McMaster spent much of his address exhorting the young cadets, who had completed their senior year in high school, to put their training to use in future careers, whether they enter the military or eventually go into business or some other occupation.

"You are an extraordinary generation, and extraordinary young men," he said. "Humanity needs you to lead and to serve."

McMaster offered his thoughts on leadership.

"Leadership means building teams and to lead by example," McMaster said. "If you are an enthusiastic leader, it will be contagious. How often do you see a team adopt the leader's attitude, the leader's standards?"

Soon the graduates were collecting their diplomas, and in a final flourish cheered as they tossed their caps into the air at the ceremony's conclusion.