Washington, D.C., was rocked on November 26 when a lone ambush left two West Virginia National Guard members gravely wounded near the Farragut West Metro station, just blocks from the White House. One of the soldiers, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, succumbed to her injuries the following day, while Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe remains clinging to life after surgery. This was not random street violence — it was an attack on uniformed Americans doing the hard work of protecting our capital.
Authorities have identified the suspect as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who reportedly entered the United States in 2021 under the Operation Allies Welcome resettlement program and who had worked alongside U.S. partner forces in Afghanistan. Reports say he drove across the country to carry out the ambush and was wounded at the scene before being taken into custody and hospitalized. The obvious questions about how someone with that background was allowed back into our country and remains a threat deserve blunt answers.
Make no mistake: this is a catastrophic vetting failure that flows directly from the open-door, bureaucratic chaos of the last administration’s resettlement and asylum policies. Men who fought alongside us in Afghanistan were welcomed — and the system that processed entrants in 2021 and after has glaring gaps that now cost an American life. Conservative Americans aren’t looking for scapegoats; we want concrete reforms that prevent another tragedy like this from happening in the shadow of the people’s house.
Justice must be swift and severe. Federal prosecutors, including the U.S. Attorney’s office, have already signaled they will pursue the most serious charges available and seek the death penalty if warranted, and national security experts like Jamil Jaffer have said the shooter should face significant punishment up to and including capital sentencing. For those who attacked our troops in uniform, nothing less than the full weight of the law will do. America’s defenders deserve protection and the certainty that such cowardly attacks will be met with the harshest response.
This moment should galvanize a broader, common-sense overhaul: stop rubber-stamping asylum and resettlement approvals without rigorous background checks, tighten oversight of programs that import potential threats, and prioritize the safety of American communities and service members over abstract political virtue signaling. The president’s move to pause certain asylum decisions and review policies was the right immediate step; now Congress and the executive branch must follow through with permanent fixes. Our national security hinges on the willingness to put country before ideology.
Above all, we owe a debt to Sarah Beckstrom and to Andrew Wolfe — young Americans who answered the call and paid for it with their blood. Conservatives stand with their grieving families, demand accountability from those who failed to protect them, and insist on a return to policies that put Americans first. Let this tragedy be a turning point: protect our borders, secure our vetting, and never allow the safety of our patriots to be negotiable.
