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“The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting near the White House that killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and critically wounded Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, both of the West Virginia National Guard, is facing charges including first-degree murder… The administration has ordered 500 more National Guard members to the nation’s capital…
“Rahmanullah Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan national who had been living in Bellingham, Washington, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Seattle. He worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War. He applied for asylum during the Biden administration and was granted it this year under President Donald Trump… [As of Friday the] administration has halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports… [and] is promising to pause entry to the United States from some poor nations and review Afghans and other legal migrants already in the country.” AP News
The left argues that the shooting should not lead to additional immigration restrictions.
“The Biden team’s failure to prepare for the fall of Kabul inevitably brought some dangerous people into the country. They should be identified and repatriated. Yet threatening the status of all 77,000 Afghan refugees who have made America their home is morally bankrupt. Many are people who put their lives and their family’s lives at risk to help the United States…
“Helping them secure permanent status in America, which would include further vetting and checks, has been a bipartisan issue in the House and Senate. To punish law-abiding refugees who risked everything to help America is not going to inspire foreign friends in the future. Many deserving Afghans have been waiting for years to get the right paperwork to enter the U.S., and some of their strongest supporters are U.S. veterans.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from ‘foreigners.’ Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved. Almost all of us are mongrels — of mixed nationalities, mixed ethnicities, mixed races, mixed creeds…
“Here’s how Ronald Reagan put it in a 1988 speech, in which he explained: ‘I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, ‘You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.’”
Robert Reich, Substack
“Ms. Beckstrom and Mr. Wolfe are the latest victims of a political violence permeating our society. At family Thanksgiving tables this year, the absences of Melissa and Mark Hortman as well as Charlie Kirk were sadly felt. It was the same for too many people whose loved ones have been killed so far in mass shootings in the United States this year, where there are more guns than in any other country…
“There will be Americans who note that this tragedy could have been averted if Ms. Beckstrom and Mr. Wolfe had not been needlessly deployed to Washington in August on the order of President Trump. No one, including the president, is responsible for this tragedy, except for its perpetrator. It should be possible to understand both that Mr. Trump’s use of the National Guard has been outrageous and that the use did not cause this shooting.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
“Ironically, deploying more National Guardsmen to increase the force protection for National Guardsmen is a very Afghanistan-style military error… We sent more and more troops to Afghanistan because we had already lost troops there, instead of pausing to reassess the war itself.”
Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic
The right argues that the shooting should lead to additional immigration restrictions.
The right argues that the shooting should lead to additional immigration restrictions.
“America deserves a sustainable immigration system that keeps the bad apples out, yet also continues to allow it to benefit from the dynamism — as well as the regular infusions of a distinctly American spirit — that the right kind of immigrants provide. To do that, the Trump administration shouldn’t close the door to all comers, but must implement a rigorous, multi-layered ideological testing process to determine their suitability for life in America…
“Anyone who wishes to reside in or immigrate permanently to the United States ought to believe in its inherent goodness; that’s not a political view, it’s common sense. Every would-be immigrant ought to be subject to a long, arduous, one-half-strike-and-you’re-out process to prove they want to be ‘American’ in the truest sense of the word.”
Isaac Schorr, New York Post
“Trump's restrictive immigration policies already enjoyed strong support. After the terrorist attack in Washington DC, Trump likely will have even more political support for these new restrictions and efforts to reinstall accountability for immigration and refugee policies. It is long past time for the US to approach both on a more rational basis, especially in an era of Islamist terror. It is incredibly heartbreaking that it took the murder of a young soldier on peaceful duty in our nation's capital to make that point.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
Some argue, “Even careful vetting is imperfect, and Rahmanullah Lakanwal may have become radicalized in the U.S. This has been known to happen even with the children of refugees who grow up in America. Some will say this means the U.S. should never admit such refugees, but the alternative is abandoning allies who assist Americans in war… Collective punishment of all Afghans in the U.S. won’t make America safer and it might embitter more against the United States.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, has repeatedly used the word ‘invasion’ to refer to plans to deploy Guard troops in crime-ridden Chicago. Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, addressing possible Guard deployment in Portland, wrote that ‘Trump troops are deliberately attacking peaceful protesters to incite violence.’… The Atlantic wrote that Trump and his advisers ‘seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.’…
“Time after time, Democrats and others in the Resistance accused Trump of plotting to use the Guard to attack Americans. It was a rhetorical campaign that culminated in the ‘you must refuse an illegal order’ video and, finally, to [Sen. Elissa] Slotkin’s warning that ‘we’re about to see’ uniformed military ‘shoot at American civilians.’ Is it any wonder that some unbalanced individual, whether motivated by anti-Trump animus or religious zealotry or some other impulse, would decide to take action?”
Byron York, Washington Examiner
