The Story Begins in Vietnam

In 1969 Steve Klein was a young, enlisted infantryman, serving as a Team Leader and translator imbedded with the Marines’ Combined Action Program (CAP) in the Vietnam jungle. As a Team Leader Corporal-in-Charge, Klein led ambush patrols in the bush for 240 nights in a row! His duties and level of responsibility were commensurate with that of a captain on an Army Special Forces (SF) A-Team doing the same mission.

In carrying out his duties, Klein gathered human intelligence in order to plan the ambush he would conduct that evening as he also coordinated three other ambushes to be executed concurrently. During the day he encrypted the ops message he sent to his company commander to de-conflict with other Marine activities in the local area of operations (AO).

The distinguishing characteristic of Marine CAPs that differentiated them from Army SF A-Teams was, while the SF lived and operated from fortified U.S. firebases, the Marine CAP teams lived “outside the wire” in the Vietnamese village they were assigned to and were regarded by the villagers as a part of their community.

This CAP people-to-people relationship greatly facilitated the team’s intelligence collection because information on Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces in the AO was more readily shared by the South Vietnamese with resident U.S. forces than was the case when U.S. patrols merely passed through an area. Because of this forward-deployed stationing and intelligence collecting, Corporal Klein’s CAP Team, as well as other similarly forward-deployed Marine CAP teams, enjoyed a great deal of success in intercepting and killing NVA units infiltrating from the A Shau Valley.

Following Vietnam, Klein became a “mustang,” that is, an enlisted man promoted to commissioned officer.

In the 1970’s Lieutenant Klein functioned as a Battalion Communications-Electronic Warfare Officer training Marines at 29 Palms, CA, in tactics that were later used in Operation Desert Storm. During this period Klein established his bona fides as an expert operational planner with the hierarchy of the Marine Corps.

The Story Continues in Iraq

After the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom, now-former Lieutenant Klein was well-recognized as a war planning expert within “the Marine fraternity” based on his proven success collecting intelligence in the midst of enemy forces and turning that intelligence into “kills.” Consequently, Klein was contracted by the Marine Corps to assist in planning for the Marine assault to capture Fallujah, Iraq, from Islamic jihadists in 2004. However, at this point, the story begins to sour. Based on Klein’s extensive Marine combat experience, he began to teach Corps planners about Mohammad’s fanatical “way of war” because he knew how important it is for U.S. forces going into combat to understand the thinking and planning guidelines of the enemy.

Political Correctness Intervenes

But when the Islamic basis and thrust of Klein’s teaching became known to the Pentagon, he was told to cease and desist from his approach and to delete the Mohammadan- and Islamic-war aspects of his war planning advice. In Klein’s estimation, ceasing to impart this insightful knowledge to Marines preparing for vicious combat with such a rabid opponent would be a criminal omission of his part. Consequently, he refused to omit such potentially life-saving knowledge of the enemy in preparing brother Marines for battle. (And as it turned out, the Battle of Fallujah was the heaviest urban combat Marines were involved in since the Battle of Hue City during the 1968 Tet Offensive.) Eventually, a “compromise” of sorts was worked out and Klein completed his service contract activities.

Steve Klein’s Counter-Jihad Story Is A “Family Affair”

Matt Klein, Klein’s son, served as an Army sergeant in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then back to Afghanistan. Being as versatile as his father, young Klein is a combat veteran in the capacities of combat medic, sniper, and ambush team leader. As a result of Matt’s courage and skill in an engagement with the jihadists in Iraq, he was decorated by the Army with the Bronze Star and Combat V for saving the lives of an officer whose arm was blown off and five other wounded soldiers by applying his medical expertise and by stopping the enemy with a courageous counterattack.

But again, like his father, Matt Klein ran into political correctness imposed from higher authority, hindering his efforts to fight against the Islamic jihadists. Young Klein encountered his political correctness problem in Iraq for failing to comply with rules of engagement (ROE) when he was leading combat patrols. The ROE called for patrols to be accompanied by a local Iraqi; however, Steve had advised his son Matt not to include a local Iraqi in his patrol because of unreliability of Iraqis as demonstrated in “green on blue” incidents. In spite of the successes of his patrols, Matt’s brigade commander called him in to insist that he follow ROE by adding local Iraqis on his patrols. He demurred and requested to be relieved of patrol leader duty and to be returned to his status as a combat medic. The brigade commander agreed to this change.

This enforcement of the ROE requirement to include an untrusted Iraqi on patrol is a classic case of pursuing the fiction that Muslims share our opposition to Islamic jihad. However, they do not because jihad, that is, imperialistic war of conquest against non-Muslims, is the core commandment of the Islamic religion! For example:

Quran (9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” “People of the Book” refers to Christians and Jews. According to this verse, they are to be violently subjugated, with the sole justification being their religious status. Verse 9:33 tells Muslims that Allah has charted them to make Islam “superior over all religions.” This chapter was one of the final “revelations” from Allah and it set in motion the tenacious military expansion, in which Muhammad’s companions managed to conquer two-thirds of the Christian world in the next 100 years. Islam is intended to dominate all other people and faiths.

It is insane to continue to put the lives of our armed services personnel at risk to perpetuate the myth undergirding our irrational national security policy that Islam is compatible with Western Civilization. As the above Islamic scriptural quotation and explanation leaves no doubt, the U.S. Government’s compatibility myth, the foundation of our preposterous national security policy, is demonstrated to be counterfactual by Islamic doctrine itself.

Steve Klein’s Counter-Jihad Story Continues In The U.S.

Immediately after the 9/11 World Trade Center jihadist attack, Klein jumped into action. Using his Marine CAP intelligence collection training, he visited California mosques with translators to question the Muslims there. All of these mosque interviews more or less followed the same pattern; they would begin amicably in English with protestations of “We love America,” but soon degenerated into hostility to America and non-Muslims expressed in Arabic. When Klein went public with the results of his mosque interviews revealing Muslims’ anti-American attitudes, he was largely refuted, doubted, or ignored by skeptics.

Then about four years ago, Klein’s translator, Nabil Bissada of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, invited Steve to appear on Arabic Christian TV “The Way” to address the dire situation of Egyptian Coptic Christians who are under constant threat of death from Egyptian Muslims. The format for this series of programs was that Klein would present an American, non-Muslim point of view as the only English speaker in a panel of guests.

The owner of this TV outlet, Joseph Nasralla, mentored Klein in broadcasting, and after about a year he gave him his own show, “Wake Up America.” Klein’s popular show, also carried by Los Angeles DISH TV, Channel 35.3 as well as being aired internationally, is basically an “Intel Brief” dealing with developments in Islam’s civilizational clash with the Western world about which Americans and all non-Muslims should be aware.

Due to Klein’s media notoriety with Egyptian Coptic Christians, prior to September 11, 2012, he was contacted by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer to the infamous video, “Innocence of Muslims” for consultation. Nakoula, a Coptic Christian, confided to Klein his motive. Nakoula’s rationale might be termed – “inside baseball” in the world of Islamic jihad.

The Islamic jihad “playbook” that is largely being followed modern jihadists, “Milestones: In The Shade Of The Quran,” was written by Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian strategist Sayyid Qutb. As Qutb lays out in his book, preparing the Muslim world (“ummah”) for jihad requires “progressive revelation” to gradually introduce them to the extremist aspect of Islamic ideology – murder of non-believers in the name of the Muslim god Allah. In fact, the current leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared: “we must not throw the masses — scant in knowledge — into the sea before we teach them to swim.” The jihadist fear is that a premature jihad would result in wrong choices that would not be in accord with Islamic law, the Shariah.

Nakoula had just this concept in mind because he reasoned – a movie mocking Mohammad would incite the Muslim ummah into frenzied revenge jihad, causing it to misfire. As he theorized with Klein, if the Muslim world is unprepared for organized jihad, it will be easier for the West to defeat. He likened premature jihad to Hitler launching World War II in the mid-1930’s when the Nazis had not yet completed building sufficient war materiel. Klein agreed to be his English language spokesman, thus getting sucked into the “Benghazi vortex” and increasing his notoriety markedly with both the FBI and Islamic jihadists. Klein reports that it felt to him like Obama and Holder would have preferred for him to have joined Nakoula in jail.

The world attention that Obama and Clinton directed to Nakoula’s video certainly advanced his objective of inciting frenzied jihadist actions. In this regard, Klein has a “mission accomplished” attitude in that, Nakoula’s production caused jihadist violence that resulted in decidedly negative world opinion toward Islamic destructiveness, even if it didn’t cause a worldwide jihad misfire as originally envisioned.

The “Enemy Of The Islamic State”

As a result of Klein’s TV broadcasting and association with Nakoula, he was singled out by the Islamic State in the seventh issue of its Internet e-zine, “Dabiq (PDF)”* as “a spiteful crusader who mocked Rasullah.”** This dangerous attention from the Islamic State prompted the FBI to consult with Klein about his personal security.

Conclusion

Steve Klein has summed up his personal counter-jihad as a fight that is unavoidable because Islamic jihad is an existential threat to the American way of life. Therefore, he invokes John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight!,” as well as “Semper Fidelis for Jesus.”

Notes

* In Islamic eschatology according to the Hadith, Daqib, a village in northern Syria, is the equivalent of Armageddon in Christian eschatology. In the end time, a Muslim army will battle and defeat an army of Romans (Christians) at Dabiq.
** “Rasullah” is Arabic for the incantation “Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.”

(See “A Former Marine’s Continuing Experiences in Countering Islamic Jihadist”, originally posted HERE)

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Col. Thomas Snodgrass, USAF (retired) served over a year in Peshawar, Pakistan, working with Pakistani military intelligence. During his year in Vietnam he daily scheduled 130 U.S. Army and Air Force intelligence collection aircraft. In his final overseas tour he was the U.S. Air Attaché behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw, Poland.

In total, Col. Snodgrass was variously an Intelligence Officer or an International Politico-Military Affairs Officer serving duty tours in seven foreign countries, as well as teaching military history and strategy at the Air War College, US Air Force Academy, and USAF Special Operations School during a thirty-year military career.

Additionally, he was awarded an Air Force scholarship to get a history master’s degree in revolutionary insurgent warfare at the University of Texas, as well as being granted a year’s educational sabbatical to teach and to write about international relations as an Air Force Research Associate in the graduate school at the Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, Florida. Following the Air Force, Col. Snodgrass was an adjunct professor of military history for ten years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Arizona..

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