OPINION:
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks permanently changed the way we — and the rest of the world — travel by air. The Dec. 6, 2019, terrorist attack at the Pensacola Naval Air Station should permanently change the extent to which we train foreign military personnel in the United States.
Many nations send their military personnel to America to study and train at a variety of schools and bases. Some even attend our military academies. Thousands of temporary, non-immigrant visas are granted every year to accomplish that sort of education and training. (About 5,500 such visas were granted just to Saudi citizens in 2019.)
The system enabling foreign militaries to send their people to the United States is supposed to require careful selection and screening by the sending nation and an equally careful visa approval process by our State Department.
From the Pensacola incident, it’s obvious that the system is badly in need of repair, and that the Pentagon should take control of it. The Defense Department took the first step toward that result on Dec. 10, when it halted all operational training of Saudis in the United States pending its investigation of the approximately 850 other Saudi officers here now.
Both we and our allies’ militaries benefit greatly from these sorts of military/cultural training exchanges. Allied officers benefit enormously by being trained in our weapon systems that their countries buy, which enables the trained officers to operate with our forces more effectively. We benefit from the usual easing of cooperation between our forces and the allied personnel trained here. We similarly benefit from the training our officers are afforded in allied military schools and operational units.
For many decades, we have been training student pilots sent to the United States by allied air forces, including that of Saudi Arabia, with generally good results. On the second day of the 1991 Gulf War, the officer giving the official Pentagon briefing the progress of the war from a base in Saudi Arabia introduced a Saudi pilot who had shot down five Iraqi aircraft the previous day, making him an instant ace.
The Dec. 6 attack was perpetrated by a Saudi Arabian air force second lieutenant named Ahmed al-Shamrani who was shot to death by responding sheriff’s deputies.
Because al-Shamrani apparently did not act alone — at least two fellow Saudi students were seen taking cellphone videos of the attack — the FBI detained and questioned at least six Saudis. Though these men were reportedly cleared, there are conflicting reports that other Saudis may have fled Pensacola and may not yet have been located.
The problems with training some foreign military students are varied and some include significant dangers. One of the worst examples is the fact that many Afghan trainees — some of whom may have terrorist connections — have disappeared from U.S. bases. We can’t know where each of them is or whether they have formed or joined terrorist cells here. The harm they could inflict could easily be greater than the number of casualties in the Pensacola shooting.
To solve this problem will require us to risk offending some of our allies and the politically correct in Congress because some countries have to be treated differently from others.
The first thing we need to do is to transfer the majority of our training of foreign military personnel to the nations those militaries serve. We should welcome Brits, Aussies, Israelis, Jordanians, Canadians and many others to train here. But Afghanis, Saudis, Egyptians, Turks and many others should be trained in their own nations.
Limiting most allies to overseas training would eliminate the danger of deserters with terrorist intentions disappearing into our population and the danger of attacks that could kill hundreds or thousands. What al-Shamrani did with a pistol in Pensacola could have been magnified a thousand-fold if he had been piloting even an unarmed F-18 and had crashed it into a shopping center or football stadium.
The second thing we need to do is to limit the U.S.-based training to more senior officers to the extent that any training is offered to nations such as Saudi Arabia. Al-Shamrani was at the low end of the food chain. Longer-serving officers – majors and above – would be easier for us and for the allied governments seeking to send them here to vet before they are sent here. The travel of those who come here should be limited and monitored.
Third, some nations — especially Afghanistan, but not only that nation — should be barred entirely from sending their military personnel to the United States for training. We have been training the Afghanis for 18 years with little effect, and the danger posed by their deserters is too high. Other nations should have the number of the trainees they send reduced substantially.
We have to balance the risk to our national security against the benefit to us and to our allies. Both we and our allies benefit from the knowledge we gain about each other. But the damage done by incidents such as the Pensacola shootings inevitably creates a lasting distrust that will not — and should not — soon be ameliorated.
There will always be some risk in bringing allied personnel here for training. Reducing that risk should be a Defense Department priority.
• Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
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