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Two West Virginia National Guard members were ambushed near the Farragut West metro station in Washington on November 26, and the nation has rightly been shaken by the brazenness of the attack that left Specialist Sarah Beckstrom dead and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe gravely wounded. These were young Americans on duty protecting our capital, not statistics for cable news — their sacrifice demands our anger and our action.
The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who entered the United States under a resettlement program and has been charged with murder and other serious crimes after allegedly traveling across the country to carry out the ambush. This is not speculation but a clear example of the dangers that come from lax vetting and open-door policies that prioritize feel-good optics over the safety of Americans and our troops.
So imagine the gall: Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, referring to this slaughter as an “unfortunate accident” while questioning DHS leadership — a line that drew an immediate, righteous rebuke from Secretary Kristi Noem, who called the attack what it was, a terrorist assault. Thompson’s casual phrasing was more than tone-deaf; it underlined a contemptible tendency among some Democrats to downplay anything that makes their failed policies look hard to defend.
Secretary Noem, now serving as Homeland Security secretary, was right to interrupt the soft-pedaled nonsense and say plainly that Americans and our servicemembers are not expendable talking points in a partisan game. Noem also slammed the administration’s vetting failures tied to resettlement programs like Operation Allies Welcome, and her anger reflects what millions of Americans feel: there must be accountability when policy choices put U.S. lives at risk.
Federal prosecutors, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, have signaled they will pursue the harshest penalties, including seeking the death penalty, and the administration has already paused asylum decisions for Afghan nationals while investigators dig into how this would-be killer entered the country. That response is overdue, but let it be a wake-up call: Congress must stop the political theater and pass real reforms to close the loopholes that let dangerous individuals slip past vetting into our communities.
As families bury their hero and the wounded fight for their lives, conservatives should not be coy about what needs fixing — secure borders, strict vetting, and a federal government that puts Americans first, not open-borders virtue signaling. We owe it to Sarah Beckstrom, to Andrew Wolfe, and to every hard-working American who expects their government to protect them, to turn grief into resolve and make sure this never happens again.
