Thanksgiving eve in the nation’s capital is supposed to feel quiet, almost sacred. Families loading cars for the drive to grandma’s house, airports buzzing with travelers, the faint smell of turkey already in the air. Instead, yesterday afternoon, just a few blocks from the White House, gunfire shattered everything.
Two West Virginia National Guard members, standing post in the heart of Washington, were ambushed at point-blank range. Both remain in critical condition tonight. The alleged shooter? An Afghan national who arrived in the United States in 2021 under one of the most controversial resettlement programs in recent memory.
What happened next unfolded like a nightmare no one saw coming, yet many had warned about for years.
A Holiday Ambush That Shocked the Nation
It was just after lunch when the shots rang out. Witnesses described a man calmly approaching the soldiers before opening fire without warning. The scene quickly turned into chaos, uniformed personnel rushing to secure the area, tourists scattering, Secret Service sweeping the White House grounds.
Within hours the suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 31-year-old who had flown into the country four years ago on one of the emergency evacuation flights that followed the fall of Kabul. He had been granted humanitarian parole, later adjusted to more permanent status. And now, authorities say, he had driven clear across the country, from Washington State to Washington D.C., with apparent intent.
The new FBI director didn’t mince words when he faced reporters outside headquarters last night.
“This is being investigated as an act of terrorism.”
FBI Director Kash Patel
Agents seized phones, laptops, tablets, everything that might tell the story of how an individual cleared to enter the country under a special program for America’s Afghan partners ended up allegedly trying to kill American troops on American soil.
The Vetting Question Everyone Is Asking
How did we miss this?
That single question dominated every press conference yesterday. The answer, according to officials now reviewing the files, appears painfully straightforward: in the frantic final months of the Afghanistan withdrawal, speed was prioritized over security.
Tens of thousands of Afghans were airlifted out in a matter of weeks. Many carried little more than the clothes on their backs. Background checks, when they happened at all, were often incomplete. Names were misspelled. Biometric data went uncollected. Entire planeloads were waved through because the alternative, leaving U.S.-affiliated Afghans to Taliban retribution, was deemed politically unacceptable.
- Over 76,000 Afghans resettled under Operation Allies Welcome
- Thousands more arrived through related humanitarian channels
- Internal government audits later admitted significant vetting gaps
- Some individuals flagged by intelligence partners were still admitted
In my view, this wasn’t just bureaucratic chaos. It was a deliberate choice. The political cost of being seen as abandoning allies outweighed the national-security risk of bringing in people we barely knew. Yesterday showed what happens when that gamble goes wrong.
A Complicated Past with American Intelligence
Perhaps the most disturbing detail to emerge last night: the suspect had previously worked alongside U.S. forces, including special operations units, in Kandahar province. Some reports describe him as part of a partner force that occasionally coordinated with intelligence personnel.
That relationship, whatever its exact nature, was apparently enough to qualify him for evacuation when Kabul fell. It also raises an uncomfortable truth: the very people we armed and trained in distant war zones sometimes end up here, carrying whatever grievances or radicalization they picked up along the way.
We’ve seen this movie before. The Fort Hood shooter had been in contact with radical clerics while serving as an Army psychiatrist. The Pulse nightclub attacker’s father was an FBI informant. History keeps offering the same warning: proximity to American power doesn’t guarantee loyalty to American values.
The Political Firestorm Ignites Immediately
President Trump wasted no time. In an address from the White House residence, he called the attack “a crime against humanity” and announced sweeping new measures.
“Effective immediately, all processing of Afghan nationals is suspended pending comprehensive new vetting protocols. Every single individual admitted under the previous program will be reviewed.”
He didn’t stop there. The president ordered an additional 500 National Guard troops to the capital region and made clear that the deployment, originally sold as routine support for local law enforcement, now serves a far graver purpose.
Senior administration officials were even more blunt in private briefings. One described the incident as “the inevitable consequence of four years of deliberate border dissolution.” Another called it “the first domino in what could become a very dark season.”
A Cross-Country Journey Ends in Violence
Investigators are still piecing together Lakanwal’s movements over the past months. What we know so far is chilling in its ordinariness.
He lived quietly in the Pacific Northwest, held a commercial driver’s license, and apparently showed few outward signs of radicalization to those around him. Then, sometime in the last week, he climbed into a vehicle and drove nearly 3,000 miles straight to the nation’s capital.
Surveillance footage reportedly shows him circling the area multiple times before choosing his moment. The soldiers he targeted weren’t random, authorities believe they represented the uniform he once fought alongside, and perhaps later grew to resent.
The Bigger Picture No One Wants to Discuss
Look, I’ve covered national security long enough to know that every incident like this gets weaponized. One side screams “see, we told you so” while the other insists it’s an isolated tragedy that must never tarnish entire communities. Both are missing the point.
The uncomfortable reality is that when you import large numbers of military-age males from failed states, some percentage, however small, will carry the war home with them. Ideology, trauma, resentment, it doesn’t matter. The risk is baked in when the process is rushed and the stakes are existential.
We did this in Europe after 2015. We watched cities struggle with integration, with crime spikes, with terror cells forming in plain sight. America told itself it would be different because we’re America. Yesterday proved we’re not immune.
What Happens Next
The review ordered by the president won’t be gentle. Every file from 2021–2024 is getting pulled. Every derogatory piece of intelligence that was ignored or downplayed is coming to light. And yes, some people who have built lives here over the last four years are going to find immigration agents at their door.
That’s the cold calculus of national security. When the system fails catastrophically once, you don’t get the luxury of assuming it won’t fail again.
There will be lawsuits, of course. Advocacy groups will cry foul. Stories of grandmothers and honor students caught in the dragnet will dominate certain networks. But two National Guard soldiers are fighting for their lives tonight because we chose compassion without caution. The pendulum was always going to swing back.
As one senior official put it to me off the record: “We opened the door to save a few thousand genuine allies. We just didn’t realize how many wolves were wearing their clothes.”
Thanksgiving will still happen tomorrow. Families will still gather. Turkeys will still come out of ovens. But for a lot of Americans, the holiday now carries a shadow that wasn’t there yesterday morning.
And somewhere in a hospital room tonight, two young soldiers are clinging to life while the country asks itself how we got here, and what we’re willing to do to make sure it never happens again.
The investigation continues. More details will emerge. But one thing feels certain: the era of assuming good intentions from chaotic mass migration is over. The bill for those assumptions just came due, and it was written in American blood, just steps from the White House.
