Lesson of the day:
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
Benjamin Franklin

I hope my answer helps, I know a lot of people are *beyond angry* – and we shoud be. but for the parents, the explanation is as simple as it is obvious:

a terrorist attacked, and a terrorist was killed. the explanation they need is why security at a *military base* wasn’t better.

we turn now to: “Why help the Saudis?” – There is a *very* good answer…

what has never occurred to quite a few people is that the Saudis trust us to do one thing very well: help maintain the Saudi first line of defense.

with both 9/11 AND the Pensacola attack, what the world witnessed was not a duplicitous Saudi government, but that Saudi is dealing with a cancerous growth of Shia islam within its borders.

what you’re missing is that ALL of the attackers were SHIA Muslims – the majority of the Saudi government are Wahabbi Muslim.

put simply: we are helping Saudi because there is no nation on earth which wants a Shia government in charge of 65 % of the world’s sweet light crude. they would be forced to deal with that government to keep their economy going and then a shia dominated government friendly to Iran would have all the cash it needed to help Iran fund a nuclear weapon.

*that is why we help Saudi even if one of their precious royal-related morons goes off the rails and does stupid crap like what happened at NAS.*

so in short, our committment to nuclear non-proliferation that is our pennance for using the bomb at the end of world war II is the reason that we help Saudi today.
all because Iran wants the bomb. it really is that simple. or complex. either way.

We still import petroleum, refine it and sell it to other countries.

AND
” we are letting them go home?”

Do you want to pay to take care of them for the rest of their lives? I would suggest they be flagged to not return here for prison or anything else.

David for better garbage

Saudi students have been flying over your head here in the Pensacola training area since 1988. that’s… 32 years. and the saudi students who are being sent home are in a double jeopardy: the Saudis are seen by the Muslim world as the caretakers of the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. the ones charged with porn possession will be handled severely – by the Saudis. the rest will be treated a worse than our gitmo prisoners. and the ones charged with *Both*… well, they won’t be as brutally taken out as Kashoggi was for his treason against Saudi, but the saudi courts will move with motivation against them.

The necessity for Saudi pilots is driven by the equipment they have – there are only two, maybe three countries in the Middle East that the United States enjoys close enough relations with that those countries may obtain the avionics packages that go in the fighters they purchase. Think of it as the Saudis, Israelis, and Jordanians all have the Ultimate edition of the avionics that go in the f-15’s, f-16’s, and f-18’s that they buy from us.

If they have the equipment there, that means they train here, just like our own pilots do. So if we have to go over there and assist, say… against Iran… or Iraq… or Iranian proxies in Yemen, Somalia, or anywhere else near that theater…
you get the idea.

In a nod to your comment, now that American oil imports are zero, and exports are picking up, the only real committment in American policy can shift back to containment of nuclear expansion and the more idealistic push for democratic reform. Which means the Saudis would be left to more or less go their own way and our presence in the region can be drawn down.

hope my comment amplifies why they’re here.

There is a quote from Apple in a letter released after the San Bernardino attack. Here is a quote from that letter:
We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

End quote. So no, Apple does NOT need to help. The report also concluded that he acted alone. So there isn’t even an urgency of situation, so they can’t even FORCE apple to help. Especially now that the help would compromise the security of ALL Apple phones. And the Chinese already have illegal copies of Apple hardware that they sell to their own citizens in violation of trade agreements concerning respect of American patents. So the “chinese market” argument is disqualified right out of the gate.

k.
Cyber-Security Consultant.