Two National Guard soldiers ambushed in Washington DC by Afghan illegal alien.

 

Soldiers stand guard near the scene of the shooting. Reuters. 

Two members of the West Virginia National Guard were ambushed in Washington DC by an Afghanistan national in the country illegally. Reuters. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29 year old who was admitted into the United States under Joe Biden's visa program put into place after the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban. The National Guard were patrolling as part of President Trump's crime crackdown. The motivations of the attacker have not been revealed publicly, but terrorism is suspected and the FBI is investigating if he had any links to outside groups, though none are suspected at this time. In response, President Trump has deployed 500 more troops to the city. 

My Comment:

The status of the wounded soldiers is unclear at this point. There were reports that both of them were dead, but that wasn't confirmed, so I am assuming that as of this writing they are indeed alive. Hopefully they stay that way. 

This attack was entirely predictable. Indeed, I believe I said that bringing in thousands of Afghan immigrants without vetting in the chaos that was the Afghanistan withdrawal would absolutely lead to something like this. We had no vetting to see if these people coming into the United States were friendly and it's very likely that this man fell through the cracks. I guess it's possible that he got radicalized after he got here, but that seems very unlikely. 

I also have very little doubt that this was Islamic terrorism. Supposedly the attacker said "Allah Akbar", "god is great" before he got into the gunfight, which is an obvious tell. The real question is if he was a "lone wolf" attacker, if he had links to terrorists or if he was an out and out member of a terror group like ISIS. I am guessing he will be the first one, there aren't that many active terror groups that can fund and promote attacks anymore. 

I am going to say that this was a policy failure on the part of the Trump administration. Obviously, Biden never should have let him in to begin with, but Trump should have deported this guy. His visa had expired and you would have thought folks let in under Biden's program would have been the first to go. Supposedly, this guy was an interpreter, so maybe he wouldn't have been deported anyways, but I don't really understand why these guys weren't the first on the list to be deported. Hopefully they will be now. 

I do think that Trump's focus on foreign policy is worth criticizing at this point. Trump has been focused on ending foreign wars, which is obviously commendable, and he has had a lot of success. But this attack is going to cause some serious demands for him to refocus back on the issue that got him elected.  Twice. I know that the Russia Ukraine war might be getting close to some kind of resolution and that is drawing a lot of attention from his administration, but at some point enough is enough and the focus has to be at home. 

The Democrats reactions to this has been predictable. Before anyone knew who was responsible, they were very loud saying that this had nothing to do with the video they released that encouraged soldiers to disobey "unlawful" orders, without specifying what those orders were. And some of them were either downplaying the attack, saying that they soldiers shouldn't have been there in the first place if they didn't want to get shot, or even celebrating it! They got a lot more quiet when it was revealed the suspect was a Afghan national, but it still happened. 

Was this attack a failure? I am not sure. So far at least, nobody has died, and the suspect was wounded and captured himself. But the image of soldiers being shot only a block or two from the White House? That's going to stick with people. The attack was mostly a failure, but I can't deny the fact that this was impactful...