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A routine patrol near the Farragut West Metro turned into a nightmare for our brave National Guard. On November 26, two West Virginia Guardsmen were ambushed just blocks from the White House, leaving Specialist Sarah Beckstrom dead and her fellow soldier gravely wounded — a gut-punch to every patriot who believes our servicemembers deserve better protection than this. This was not a random tragedy we should shrug off; it was a national security failure that demands answers.
Law enforcement quickly identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who came here under the Biden-era Operation Allies Welcome in 2021 and was later approved for asylum in 2025. The truth is uncomfortable: policies that rushed people into our country without long-term oversight can produce horrific outcomes when mental health, vetting, and integration are neglected. Americans have the right to expect that those who enter our country have been screened and monitored in a way that keeps our communities and troops safe.
Investigations have revealed Lakanwal once served in an elite CIA-backed Afghan “Zero Unit,” the same paramilitary forces the U.S. trained and relied on during the long war. These are not harmless civilians; they were combatants with violent histories who operated in morally murky circumstances, and many struggled to adapt after being resettled. Washington’s foreign-policy experiments now blow back on Main Street, and taxpayers and soldiers are paying the price.
President Trump’s immediate policy response — suspending Afghan processing and ordering broad reviews of asylum and green-card approvals — is the only responsible course after this ambush. When a system meant to protect people becomes a conduit for violence against our own, we must pause and fix it, not pretend nothing happened. The decision to reexamine admissions and to halt visa issuances from certain countries reflects a hard truth: security must come before open-border virtue signaling.
Let’s be clear about where blame belongs: the mass, poorly managed resettlement of Afghans after the chaotic 2021 withdrawal was a policy choice by the previous administration that lacked long-term safeguards. Operation Allies Welcome brought tens of thousands here in a hurry, and too many cases show that vetting and follow-up services were haphazard at best. Conservatives warned that fast-tracking admission without rigorous, continuous vetting would invite risks; yesterday’s blood on the pavement proves we were right.
Americans should demand immediate, permanent reforms: mandatory continuous vetting, comprehensive mental-health screening tied to immigration status, and swift deportation for anyone found to be a threat. We should also require transparency about who was admitted under special programs and give local communities real say in resettlement. These are not radical proposals; they are commonsense measures to ensure that the people we welcome do not endanger our citizens or our uniformed men and women.
Meanwhile, the elites and their sympathetic media will rush to comfort the guilty conscience of open-borders ideology by insisting this was an isolated incident. Don’t buy it. When policy consistently prioritizes political optics over security, isolated incidents add up into a predictable pattern. It is time to stop lecturing hardworking Americans about compassion and instead show compassion for the innocent victims and the National Guard troops who risk everything to keep our cities safe.
Hardworking patriots across this country must hold the architects of these failures accountable at the ballot box and in the courts. We owe it to Specialist Beckstrom and every service member put in harm’s way by failed policies to demand better leadership, stronger borders, and a government that puts Americans’ safety first.
