A dozen Saudi military students will be expelled from America in the wake of the Pensacola shooting.

An Air Force team brings one of the dead sailors home. NPR/AP.

A dozen Saudi military students will be expelled from America in the wake of the Pensacola shooting that killed 3 American sailors. NPR. The Saudis, who are being trained in America, were found to be aware that the attacker was planning an attack and had even shown mass shooting videos to them. Some were also found to have been following extremist materials online. The mass shooting prompted a review of all Saudi nationals here for military training and suspended the program. The 12 Saudis being expelled are not accused of helping the gunman. 

My Comment:

Just a follow up to a previous post, I had expected some of these people to be kicked out. It was clear that some of these students were radicalized and none of them had enough respect to notify their host country that someone was planning to attack someone. Plus, some of them were radicals who never should have been in the country in the first place. 

I do have to wonder about what the wisdom of training Saudi Arabian pilots is in the first place. Saudi Arabia is an Islamist country and they have a long history of having extremists. I know that there are political and practical reasons to train their pilots, but I don't know if it was wise to do so in America itself. 

Even more surprising is that we weren't vetting these people until after the Pensacola shootings. We are now, but the damage is already done. I don't know if it was a case of political correctness, not wanting to offend the Saudis or just plain laziness but this is something that obviously should have been done but was not. 

I don't think the Saudis will raise a stink about this. After all one of their guys embarrassed them and caused several deaths here in America. They don't have much of a leg to stand on so I doubt they will be able to make much out of this. Plus, with the threat of Iran pretty high, they aren't going to pick a fight over a dozen of their airmen getting kicked out of training.