Members of the military attend a meeting convened by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia, U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump's boat strikes and their accompanying drone footage "snuff films" are not just objectionable from a legal standpoints, according to one Marine Corps veterans, they are also a failing of moral leadership that are "wounding" the country's soul.

Phil Klay is a celebrated author known for his most recent novel, Missionaries, as well as a former member of the Marine Corps. Writing for the New York Times' opinion section' opinion section on Friday, he detailed the deeper moral rot inherent in the Trump administration's military strikes against alleged drug smuggler boats.

"There are many reasons to object to the policies that the Trump administration’s videos and memes showcase. Yet the images themselves also inflict wounds," Klay wrote.

"The president inhabits a position of moral leadership. When the president and his officials sell their policies, they’re selling a version of what it means to be an American — what should evoke our love and our hate, our disgust and our delight... Amid the swirl of horrors, scandals and accusations, then, it’s worth considering what President Trump and his administration are doing to the soul of the nation."

Klay referenced the ballooning controversy surrounding the "double tap" strike from September, first reported by the Washington Post. At the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. military forces fired on a boat in the Caribbean Sea twice, the second time kill survivors of the first strike who were struggling in the water. Despite these actions being described as war crimes or outright murder, the secretary has shown little to no remorse, boasting multiple times on social media about killing "narco-terrorists," which Klay characterized as "the Trump administration’s celebration of death."

"This wounding of the national soul is hard for me to watch," Klay wrote. "Twenty years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I thought military service would be an honorable profession. Its honor derives from fighting prowess and adherence to a code of conduct. Military training is about character formation, with virtues taught alongside tactics. But barbaric behavior tarnishes all who wear, or once wore, the uniform, and lust for cruelty turns a noble vocation into mere thuggery."

He concluded by asking: "But we must still ask ourselves a fundamental, private question that, at scale, has broad political implications: Given that we are all, every day, imbibing madness, how do we guard our souls?"