On November 26, 2025, an Afghan national allegedly ambushed and shot two West Virginia National Guard members near the Farragut West metro station in Washington, D.C., killing one and critically wounding the other in a brazen attack just blocks from the White House. The suspect, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was shot and taken into custody, and prosecutors have since moved aggressively to press charges in what authorities describe as a targeted and chilling act. This is not a small local crime story; it is an attack on American servicemembers carrying out a mission to keep our capital safe.
The background of the suspect is telling and should silence the cheap partisan noise from the left: Lakanwal entered the United States under Operation Allies Welcome in September 2021 and has documented ties to partner forces in Afghanistan, having served in paramilitary units that worked with U.S. intelligence. Officials say he later applied for asylum and his immigration status was processed in later years, a timeline that highlights the failures and seams in our vetting system. Those are facts the media willfully gloss over when convenient.
Within hours of the ambush, many on the left and in sympathetic corners of the press raced to blame President Trump for the shooting, arguing that his deployment of National Guard troops to D.C. somehow put them “in harm’s way.” A litany of pundits and activists called the deployment a stunt and accused the administration of politicizing our military, while failing to account for who admitted the suspect into the country and under what program. This reflexive finger-pointing at the president before facts were fully known was predictable, partisan, and disgraceful.
Let’s call this what it is: a cold, dangerous inversion of responsibility. The politicized reaction from liberal media elites ignores that the suspect came to the U.S. through the mass evacuations and parole policies put in place in 2021, policies that were implemented by a Democrat administration in chaos. If the left truly cared about the safety of our troops, they would stop using them as political props and start demanding real accountability for porous vetting and failed immigration enforcement. The victims in uniform deserve better than being dragged into a partisan circus.
In the aftermath, Homeland Security moved to pause further Afghan immigration processing while the FBI and federal prosecutors pursue every lead, and the administration ordered reviews of asylum and parole approvals tied to the evacuation programs. The country has a right to demand a sober, thorough review of how someone with this background wound up on our streets, and it’s commonsense to slow further admissions until the process is fixed. Political grandstanding shouldn’t outweigh protecting Americans and our servicemembers.
We are also reminded that justice must be swift and unflinching; federal prosecutors have pursued serious charges and confirmed they will use every tool available to hold the accused accountable if evidence supports it. While investigations proceed, the proper response from leaders should be unity behind the troops and support for law enforcement, not opportunistic blame games designed to score cheap political points. No amount of spin from media elites will erase the fact that brave citizens put on the uniform to keep the rest of us safe.
Hardworking Americans are tired of a double standard where the left excuses systemic failures when convenient and immediately weaponizes tragedy when it can harm political opponents. We must demand honest reporting, rigorous vetting of future admissions, and an end to the corrosive reflex that treats every national security failure as an opportunity to punish political foes. Above all, we owe the wounded, the fallen, and their families our gratitude and our resolve to restore safety and common sense to our streets and our immigration system.
