This was an entirely foreseeable tragedy. Sooner or later it was going to happen. Trump had been warned by military commanders that placing troops in combat gear in major cities was a provocation that represented an easy “target of opportunity” for grievance-based violence. On November 26, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, An Aghan refugee who had been admitted to the US since hed had worked for the CIA during the Afghan war, shot two National Guard service members in Washington DC, one of them fatally.
The Trumpian fact distortion machine sprang into action immediately. In an X post, Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noem stated that Lakanwal “was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States.” Vice Presiden J.D.Vance, not to be outdone, claimed that Lakanwal came into the US “unvetted.” FBI Director Kash Patel claimed that there had ben “zero vetting” of the individual. Trump suspended “indefinitely” all migration from Third World countries claiming that all these “cuckoos” are overrunning the United States.
As you would expect from this crowd, this was entirely false. Lankawal came to the US in 2021, during the first Trump term, as part of “Operation Allies Welcome” for Afghanis who had worked for the US in Afghanistan and who would face incarceration or death by the new regime. Before that he was on a US base in Qatar, where he was thoroughly vetted at least three times by Homeland Security and the CIA. He was granted asylum earlier this year, under the second Trump administration. The strained efforts to shove this into Biden’s shoes would be laughable, if the underlying dishonesty was not so serious.
Meanwhile, Lankanwal makes use of his constitutional right not to speak to his interrogators. We don’t know what made him do this terrible and heinous act. Eventually he may explain himself, if he even knows. What concerns me more, and what is more worrisome for the future of the country, are lies that are being spread by the administration and the over-the-top response to what is really a tragedy that had been foreseeable and that troop commanders had warned against. Homeland Security had wiped the warnings aside calling them “merely speculative”.
It is not speculation anymore. The performative display of military might by bringing National Gard troops from red states to display their might in democratic cities has cost Sarah Beckstrom, member of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington, her life. It is a tragic death, entirely foreseeable, and the current administration that ordered the troops to Washington is largely responsible for it.
We should all pray for Sarah and her family. May she rest in peace.