Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Afghan Refugee Shoots National Guardsmen, One Dead
Thanksgiving should be a time of peace, but two members of the West Virginia National Guard stationed in Washington, DC, were shot yesterday. One has died. The suspect is alive and in custody. He is an Afghan national who entered the US in 2021 and who received political asylum earlier this year. He had worked with US intelligence during the US war there, and he was considered to be at risk if he had stayed. The president is already using this attack as an excuse to rachet up the pressure on immigrants and those seeking to come to the US.
According to the New York Times:
Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, succumbed to her wounds, President Trump told service members by video. "She was savagely attacked," he said. "She's dead." The president has spoken with Specialist Beckstrom's family, a White House official said.
The authorities said the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, had driven across the country from Washington State to carry out the attack. The other Guard member that was shot, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained in critical condition on Friday morning after undergoing surgery, officials said.
As a result of this incident, the White House has gone even crazier. The president has decided that he does not want any more immigrants from "Third World Countries," which in his mind are what he previously called "shit-hole countries." He said he would "permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries." Skipping over the idiocy of a permanent pause (pauses are not permanent by definition), this is a very broad-brush response to an isolated incident. Clearly, it is an over-reaction.
Mr. Lakanwal was a member of a Zero Unit, a paramilitary supported by the CIA in Afghanistan whose job it was to engage in night raids and clandestine missions on behalf of the US. The rumors of thei violence and brutality are denied at CIA headquarters, but Mr. Lakanwal appears to have had some mental issues as a result of his service. A childhood friend, who was called only Muhammed in the papers, said he spoke to the alleged shooted a few weeks before the fall of Kabul, and he stated his friend was in bad mental shape.
This occurred in Washington, DC, so the issue is a political hot potato, with the MAGA White House blaiming the previous administration. "The Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including C.I.A., as a member of a partner force in Kandahar," the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, said in a statement, adding that the accused assailant "should have never been allowed to come here."
It is unclear if the CIA director said that knowing that it was the Trump administration that granted him political asylum earlier this year. Mr. Radcliff appears to have spiked the football a little early. It was the Trump Departments of Homeland Security and of State that were involving in approving the asylum application. The mud has splattered on them as well.
So, the future of all Afghans in the US is now in question. If there are deportations, the US will be hobbled in future conflicts because helping the Americans does not mean they will respond in kind. Mr. Lakanwal deserves a fair trial and punishment if found guilty. What should not happen is persecution of the entirety of the group of refugees who came after the fall of Kabul. Yet, it will go far beyond that, to 18 other countries from which refugees have come. America will become weaker for it.
The decline under the Trump administration continues to accelerate.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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