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Articles by Phil Klay
Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s bloodlust doesn’t hide his military failures
Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s bloodlust doesn’t hide his military failures The secretary of defense is banking on a sadistic public. Guest contributor(s) to the Minnesota Star Tribune October 14, 2026 at 2:27PM U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks on stage at Tradepoint Atlantic on Oct. 6, 2026, in Sparrows Point, Md. (Win McNamee/Tribune News Service) Comment Gift Share Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day.
A Public Execution Won’t Distract From Pete Hegseth’s Failures
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. A Public Execution Won’t Distract From Pete Hegseth’s Failures Oct. 13, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET Credit...Evan Vucci/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mr. Klay is a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war.
Pete Hegseth’s Bloodlust Doesn’t Hide His Military Failures
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Pete Hegseth’s Bloodlust Doesn’t Hide His Military Failures Credit...Evan Vucci/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mr. Klay is a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war.
Trump cometió un error de cálculo crucial sobre Irán
Tengo muchos reclamos sobre la guerra en la que serví hace dos décadas: la guerra en Irak estuvo mal planeada, fue arrogante y estuvo empañada por un liderazgo deficiente en el nivel más alto. Pero yo sabía la razón por la que estaba ahí. ¿Qué creen exactamente nuestros militares que intentamos hacer en Irán? Las justificaciones de la guerra han sido asombrosamente inconsistentes.
Trump cometió un error de cálculo crucial sobre Irán
Tengo muchos reclamos sobre la guerra en la que serví hace dos décadas: la guerra en Irak estuvo mal planeada, fue arrogante y estuvo empañada por un liderazgo deficiente en el nivel más alto. Pero yo sabía la razón por la que estaba ahí. ¿Qué creen exactamente nuestros militares que intentamos hacer en Irán? Las justificaciones de la guerra han sido asombrosamente inconsistentes.
Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran
I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level. But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran? The justifications for the war have been stunningly incoherent.
Whims. Impulse. Memes. Lies. America Shouldn’t Fight a War Like This.
I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level. But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran? The justifications for the war have been stunningly incoherent.
Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran
I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level. But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran? The justifications for the war have been stunningly incoherent.
I once supported regime change in Iraq. That’s why Venezuela worries me. Original
Foreign Policy When we use our military and roll the dice with the fate of nations, the consequences play out in a much longer time frame than social media trends.
Lo que Trump realmente está haciendo con sus ataques a embarcaciones
Cuando los funcionarios del gobierno de Donald Trump publican videos snuff de explosiones de supuestas embarcaciones de narcotraficantes, de un migrante que rompe en llanto esposado por funcionarios de inmigración o de ellos mismos delante de reclusos en una brutal prisión de El Salvador, a menudo pienso en una historia que san Agustín contó en sus Confesiones. En el siglo IV d. C., un joven llamado Alipio llegó a Roma para estudiar derecho. Era un tipo decente.
Lo que Trump realmente está haciendo con sus ataques a embarcaciones
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"Isn't this violence delightful?" What the Trump administration is really doing with the boat strikes.
When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his "Confessions." In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort.
What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes
5 hours ago When President Donald Trump introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, many economists predicted Americans would soon experience massive price increases. While inflation has ticked up in the eight months that passed, it’s been nowhere near levels initially projected. A big reason for that: …
Trump’s Boat Strikes Corrode America’s Soul - The New York Times
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Opinion | Trump’s Boat Strikes Corrode America’s Soul
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.” In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort.
Trump’s Boat Strikes Corrode America’s Soul - The New York Times
Guest Essay Dec. 5, 2025 Credit...Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez/The New York Times Listen to this article · 8:35 min Learn more When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.” In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law.
The Collective Burden of War
[You can listen to this episode of Another Life on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.] Joy Marie Clarkson: Welcome to Another Life, a podcast of Plough magazine. I’m your host, Joy Clarkson. On this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Phil Klay. Phil is an American writer whose fiction and nonfiction explore the moral complexities and spiritual pressures of the American military life.
Finding Meaning in the Madness of War
Things Worth Remembering: Finding Meaning in the Madness of War Memorizing poetry began as a way to kill time in the Marines. It turned into a lesson in how to live with the possibility of death. Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart.
Pope Francis, 88, Is Dead
With hope as a key theological virtue, Catholics are not allowed to despair. Not of ourselves nor of our Church nor of the unfolding of history. But for a young American Catholic coming of age at the turn of the millennium, I found that a tall order.
Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can't Be Trusted. Original
So now it's clear: The Trump administration has not kept sensitive details of national security secure. Thanks to reporting by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, we have learned that officials at the highest levels, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed military operations via chat on the cellphone app Signal, a medium vulnerable to hostile intelligence services. And they accidentally included Mr. Goldberg in the chat.
Trump’s choice of Hegseth will be corrosive to the U.S. military’s honor
Hegseth previously helped persuade Trump to intervene in the cases of men accused or convicted of war crimes. By Phil Klay The New York Times January 9, 2025 at 5:30PM Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be Defense Secretary, walks to meet with senators, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 17, 2024. (J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press) Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
Commonweal Centennial
Two excellent new books defend the liberal project with wisdom and clarity. So why do they yield such little hope?
November 2024
Article Tense Necessities Elizabeth Cullinan’s recently reissued collection paints a messy, rich, and tragic portrait of Irish-American womanhood. Article Keeping the Windows Open “The history of Commonweal is a history of hope and confidence.” Feature Where Secularism Fails It will be the job of Commonweal, as it always has been, to resist the pressures of contemporary secular culture. Article ‘And You a Catholic!’ What can inspire a return to faith beyond a cultural-fortress mentality?
A Generous Lens
In the brief introduction to Distant Journeys, a new collection of photography assembled from trips undertaken over nearly five decades and across six continents, David Katzenstein tells us that his “passion for discovery” began early. Perhaps it was when he was only three years old, gripping his father’s back as their “frisky gray mare” galloped across a beach in Cuba, or when he visited Norway at age seven and watched a waterfall plunge half a kilometer into the sea below.
Artists and Activists Both Have a Role. But Not the Same One. Original
Two decades ago, I was a public-affairs officer in the Marine Corps, a public-relations guy for the military, tasked with "telling the Marine Corps story" and providing accurate information about military operations to maintain the trust of the American people.
Phil Klay on Morality and War
Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Morality and war. Two words that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Yet as recent events have shown, our conscience pricks us every time we hear news of an atrocity, smarts at every war and rumor of war. Can a war ever be just? Does talk about morality in the conduct of war make any sense?
How Should We Honor the Dead of Our Failed Wars? Original
About 10 years ago, as the war in Afghanistan was slowly, painfully winding down, I walked through Arlington National Cemetery with a fellow Marine veteran and a relative of mine visiting from Ireland. We passed row after row of pristine white tombs, the dead of all the just wars and unjust wars that made and remade this country, and my relative told us he found it quite moving; he hadn't been expecting that.
U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible
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U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible Original
Listen 0:0018:24 Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. “This is our 9/11,” an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson said a few days after the rape, torture, kidnapping, and mass murder of Israelis on October 7. Or it was worse than 9/11. “Twenty 9/11s,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a few weeks later, once the scale of the devastation was evident. As for the current military campaign in Gaza?
The Cowardice of Guernica
In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace.
‘Wild Butchery of Souls’
When he set out to write about World War I, in which he’d served as an infantryman, David Jones gave himself a straightforward task: “to make a shape in words, using as data the complex of sights, sounds, fears, hopes, apprehensions, smells, things exterior and interior, the landscape and paraphernalia of that singular time and of those particular men.” Straightforward, but deceptively so, because as soon as we live through an experience we immediately begin smothering it with narratives,...
Vanity Fair - The Military’s Grave New Frontier
By PHIL KLAY Combat exercises have pivoted from anti-guerrilla tactics to preparations for full-scale war with a nuclear-armed opponent like Russia or China. R E A D M O R E By HADLEY HALL MEARES Some retired monarchs found solace far from the throne while others would lead post-royal lives that scandalized the world.
The US Military’s Grave New Frontier: Training for Conflict-Theoretically-With Another Superpower
America’s military is preparing for a different kind of war. After two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting insurgents and terrorist groups who used guerrilla-style tactics, the US armed forces have a new focus: “peer-to-peer combat.” War between great nations with large militaries. War—hypothetically—with Russia or with China. Combat of the sort America hasn’t engaged in since Korea.
The US Military’s Grave New Frontier: Training for Conflict-Theoretically-With Another Superpower
September 14, 2023 Source: Vanity Fair Journalist Phil Klay After a recent trip to Washington, DC—to help military experts workshop peer-to-peer war—Austrian army officer Franz-Stefan Gady, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told me that this new cultural and tactical pivot among the world’s major powers “could be as big of a change as going from frontier soldiers chasing Comanches to the Civil War.” ...
Every Citizen Shares Responsibility for Our Nation’s Wars
When my cellphone buzzed in a Brooklyn bar and the voice at the other end told me a Marine I’d served with had been shot in Afghanistan, I looked around, searching for someone to talk to. The band setting up, the tattooed bartenders, any of them could have plausibly been a sympathetic ear. I’ve generally found civilians quite interested once you take the effort. And yet … I couldn’t.
A Talisman Against the Taliban Original
Our Lady of the Manifest, who has travelled across continents from one volunteer for refugees to another, started with an atheist. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Sara Gilliam, an Ontario-based working mother, volunteered to help at-risk Afghans navigate the global refugee system.
Chcieli, żebyśmy se postrzelali
Tego ranka nasza haubica spuściła ze sto dwadzieścia kilogramów udoskonalonej amunicji konwencjonalnej na obóz przemytników dziesięć kilosów na południe od nas. Zlikwidowaliśmy grupkę powstańców, a potem poszliśmy na obiad do kantyny w Camp al‑Falludża. Wziąłem rybę z fasolą limeńską. Staram się zdrowo jeść. Przy stole cała nasza dziewiątka uśmiecha się i rechocze. Dalej jestem roztrzęsiony i nerwowo podniecony tym wszystkim, szczerzę się, wyłamuję sobie palce, kręcę obrączką na serdecznym.
Book Review: "The Point of No Return" by Thomas Byrne Edsall
In This Review In This Review The Point of No Return: American Democracy at the Crossroads For more than a decade, Edsall’s weekly columns in The New York Times have traced the evolution of U.S. politics, culture, demography, and large-scale social and economic change. The columns are packed with data, summaries of recent social science research, and the analysis of a large stable of academic and think-tank experts.
On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century
In This Review In This Review On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century Bacevich followed an over 20-year career as a U.S. Army officer with another as a professor, a prolific author, and a leading critic of an overly militarized, overly interventionist American foreign policy. His great literary skill and willingness to write what others are reluctant to say in public have made him one of the country’s most notable advocates of a foreign policy of restraint.
Zaczęło się w Iraku. Dziś wywodzące się z weteranów tej wojny armie najemników działają na całym świecie
W lutym 2020 r. Erik Charles Maund, dyrektor w firmie sprzedającej samochody, otrzymał serię SMS-ów od chłopaka swojej kochanki, który groził mu ujawnieniem jego pozamałżeńskiego romansu, jeśli nie zapłaci odpowiedniej sumy. Według federalnego aktu oskarżenia Maund skontaktował się z prywatną firmą ochroniarską Speartip Security. Firma ta skontaktowała się z dwoma byłymi żołnierzami amerykańskiej piechoty morskiej, którzy zajęli się problemem Maunda.
The Mercenary World the Iraq War Made
There are large numbers of mercenaries, including significant numbers of foreigners fighting for the United States on one job, and then for another high bidder on another.
‘A Stranger in Your Own City’ Review: Finding the Iraq Within
Occupying armies share blind spots. Looking back on his country’s failure during the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Russian journalist Artyom Borovik noted the gap between the advice of experienced travelers—to disappear into a country to learn it—and the practice of the Soviet army.
The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer
It was partly Albert Schweitzer’s looks that caught the world’s imagination: the bristling walrus mustache, the swept-up shock of silvery hair, the penetrating yet kindly glare of the wise man standing against a backdrop of jungle and river. It was the romance of his life, too.
The last American Aristocrat
AP Photo/Henry Griffin, File
The last American aristocrat
Not long after the Trump election I was invited to a dinner party of the sort I’d only recently learned existed. Here’s how it goes. The host is wealthy, as are half the guests, and the other half are intellectuals there to provide entertainment. Waiters bring courses prepared by the chef in the kitchen while the host guides the conversation, calling upon the intellectuals to spit out little chestnuts of wisdom.
“War Is Betrayal.” Coming to Terms With America's Disastrous Departure from Afghanistan Original
Ideas By Phil Klay August 10, 2022 7:00 AM EDT Klay, a National Book Award-winner, is the author of Missionaries and teaches at Fairfield University's MFA program.
Forgotten Soldiers and the Duty to Serve – - Rebecca Burgess Original
Writing dabbles in many currencies, but none so valuable as translation. This thought hadn’t quite crystallized for me until reading Phil Klay’s latest book on military veterans, democratic citizenship, and war.
America's military complex - Catholic Herald
Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War by Phil Klay Penguin, $27, 272 pages Leaving the Marine Corps in 2009 to embark on an instantly successful writing career, Phil Klay “envisioned [his] task primarily as making sense of the past”. He discovered quickly that it was not the past. Six years later, Barack Obama claimed “we’ve ended two wars”, but mid-scale conflicts dragged on both in Iraq, where Klay had served, and in Afghanistan.
Eric Greitens’ Embarrassing Fantasies of Political Violence
There’s always been something a little pathetic with how Eric Greitens publicizes himself. After the Osama bin Laden raid, he went on cable show after cable show, hawking his memoir and explaining how SEALs like himself operate, but always forgetting to mention that he’d never actually served with a SEAL team in combat.
How Did Guns Get So Powerful?
That day, the Rangers carried rifles—their usual weapons. But each man also wore a pair of Colt Paterson revolvers, new and mostly untested. The guns used rotating cylinders; by drawing back a hammer, a shooter turned the cylinder, putting one of five chambers in position to fire. Intellectually, the Rangers understood the value of these weapons: there’d be no need to reload until all five rounds had been expended.
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