Recently, I watched a video/podcast featuring a survivor of the Abby Gate attack during the Afghanistan withdrawal. Of course, most of us can still remember the footage of that whole chaotic situation, and it was an absolute trainwreck, but I thought it marked the end of Afghans killing Americans.
Unfortunately, it wasn't.
On Thanksgiving Day, an Afghan national who came to the US under a Biden-era program killed two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C.
The Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guardsmen in a possible terror attack near the White House Wednesday was granted asylum this year — after entering the US through a disastrous Biden-era program.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, arrived in the US through Operation Allies Welcome, the botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal plan that allowed roughly 90,000 Afghans to obtain Special Immigration Visas under the Biden Administration, sources said.
Initial reports suggested Rahmanullah Lakanwal was living in the country illegally after overstaying his visa. However, a Trump admin official confirmed to Reuters that Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year — and had no known criminal history.
The guy settled in Washington after having asylum granted.
Washington state, that is. For people even worse in geography than I am, that's on the butt-opposite side of the country.
As it stands, there's no known motive for the attack. Lakanwal reportedly worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. One would imagine that he wasn't sympathetic to the Taliban with a resume like that, but that doesn't mean this wasn't an act of terrorism.
It could have been a number of other things, too.
Regardless, two American soldiers were shot on American soil by someone we brought here from the country we were fighting for more than 20 years. That's troubling on so many levels, and I can't even blame Biden for this because, from all outward indications, Lakanwal was exactly the kind of person I was griping needed to be brought to the United States. Those who served with us shouldn't have been abandoned, and if he worked closely with the CIA, he was going to be in that camp.
This is absolutely awful, and I want to know exactly what went through his mind. It doesn't look like a round did, so there's a chance we'll get an answer. If this was terrorism, I want to know why he turned on the nation with whom he worked so closely, who brought him to a better life here in the land of the free and protected him from the Taliban.
I want to know.
It's not clear if we'll ever know any of this, though.
Please keep our National Guard troops in your prayers. These guys are deploying here in the United States these days, but they're not going to beautiful, peaceful locales, and this is evidence that they're still putting their lives on the line for this nation, even stateside.
A day after Thanksgiving, I'm incredibly thankful for each and every one of them, and I pray that the two wounded troops make a full recovery.
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