When Incompetence Comes Home — Biden’s Afghanistan Failure Led Us to This Moment

On November 26, 2025, in the middle of downtown Washington, D.C., two young National Guard soldiers from West Virginia were shot in the head in what authorities are calling a targeted ambush. They were standing near 17th and I Streets, a normal patrol on a typical afternoon, when a gunman opened fire on them because they were uniformed American service members. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national brought into the United States under Biden-era refugee policies, had driven across the entire country before carrying out the attack.

Let’s stop pretending this came out of nowhere. This has the fingerprints of the Biden administration’s incompetence all over it. And it starts where so many of Biden’s foreign-policy failures begin: Kabul.

Joe Biden’s catastrophic exit from Afghanistan wasn’t just a blunder. It was a generational disaster, one so chaotic that it made the evacuation of Saigon look like a Sunday picnic. Americans died. Allies were abandoned. Billions of dollars in U.S. equipment ended up in the hands of terrorists. And then, as the final cherry on top of the world’s worst sundae, the Biden administration opened the doors to tens of thousands of evacuees without proper vetting a fact even his own internal watchdogs later admitted.

Fast-forward to this week, and the chain of events is painfully clear.

The suspect in the D.C. attack entered the United States in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, the rushed and poorly controlled intake program the Biden administration threw together after losing control of Kabul. He was granted asylum earlier this year, another rubber-stamp decision from a bureaucracy conditioned by Biden officials to process Afghan applicants as quickly, as unquestioningly, and as politically safely as possible.

This wasn’t compassion. It was negligence dressed up as virtue.

Had President Donald J. Trump been in office, none of this would have happened. Trump’s policy toward Afghanistan was grounded in reality: negotiate, keep leverage, and withdraw on America’s terms, not the Taliban’s. There would have been no panicked mass evacuation, no abandon-ship chaos at Kabul Airport, and no pressure-cooker environment where unvetted individuals slipped into the U.S. simply because Biden’s team didn’t want the political optics of leaving anyone behind.

And let’s be honest: under Trump, terrorists and hostile actors feared us. They respected the red lines. They understood consequences. Under Biden, the only people who faced consequences were American service members, including the 13 Marines killed in Kabul, because Biden refused to listen to his own generals.

Now, two National Guard soldiers, Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and Spc. Andrew Wolfe are fighting for their lives in D.C. hospitals because Biden imported a national-security failure directly into the homeland.

This is not “just an isolated incident.” It is part of a pattern. Biden’s open-border impulses, his naïve trust in international systems, and his refusal to treat national security as a serious responsibility created an environment where an Afghan national with a violent trajectory could drive 2,000 miles across America and attempt to murder uniformed American soldiers in the nation’s capital.

President Trump’s response, ordering additional National Guard deployments, calling the shooter exactly what he is (“an animal”), and immediately halting Afghan immigration processing pending review, is what a real Commander-in-Chief looks like. Decisive. Unapologetic. Protecting Americans first.

Under Biden, decisive action was a foreign concept. Everything was theoretical. Everything was “process.” Everything was political. And now we’re living with the consequences on our own streets.

The D.C. ambush is a tragic reminder that foreign-policy incompetence doesn’t stay overseas. It comes home. It finds its way into your neighborhoods, your cities, your capital. Biden’s architects of disaster insisted for years that their Afghanistan withdrawal was a success, that their refugee screenings were airtight, that their handling of homeland security was professional and compassionate.

Tell that to the families of the two Guardsmen lying in critical condition.

America is safer today because Donald Trump is back in the White House. But the lingering damage of four years of Biden’s weakness didn’t disappear on Inauguration Day. It will take years to clean up and Tuesday’s attack is the clearest, most painful example yet of just how much damage Biden did.

The price for Biden’s failures is still being paid. And this week, two young soldiers paid it in blood.

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ENDNOTES

1. Location & Timing of Attack: Initial reporting placed the shooting near 17th and I Streets NW, Washington, D.C., around 2:15 p.m. EST on November 26, 2025, according to multiple outlets, including the Associated Press and local D.C. police briefings.
2. Victims Identified as West Virginia Guard Members: Statements from West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and the West Virginia National Guard confirmed the soldiers were members of the state National Guard deployed to D.C. as part of the federal security mission.
3. Nature of Attack (Targeted Ambush): FBI and D.C. officials stated publicly that the Guardsmen “appeared to be specifically targeted as uniformed service members,” based on surveillance and eyewitness accounts.
4. Suspect Identification: Federal charging documents and early reporting identified the shooter as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national.
5. Immigration Pathway (Operation Allies Welcome): DHS and OIG (Office of Inspector General) audits from 2022–2023 documented that Afghan nationals admitted during the 2021 evacuation entered under Operation Allies Welcome, with widespread vetting lapses acknowledged by DHS officials in congressional testimony.
6. Asylum Granted in 2025: Federal officials confirmed the suspect had been granted asylum earlier in 2025, consistent with Biden-era directives to accelerate Afghan asylum adjudications.
7. Weapon Used: Law enforcement briefings described the firearm recovered as a .357 Magnum revolver.
8. Condition of Victims: Hospitals and state officials confirmed both soldiers remained in critical condition after emergency surgery, correcting early conflicting reports of fatalities.
9. Suspect’s Cross-Country Travel: Federal investigators reported that Lakanwal had driven from Washington state to Washington, D.C., indicating significant premeditation.
10. White House Response: President Donald J. Trump publicly condemned the attack as an “act of evil,” ordered additional National Guard deployments to the capital, and halted Afghan immigration case processing pending review.
11. Guard Reinforcements: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that 500 more National Guard troops would be deployed to D.C., adding to the 2,200 already stationed there.
12. Afghan Vetting Failures Under Biden: DHS OIG Report (October 2022) and Senate Homeland Security findings documented “critical failures” in biometric cross-checks, missing derogatory information, and rushed admissions during the 2021 evacuation.
13. Afghanistan Withdrawal Criticisms: Reports from the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2022), multiple retired military commanders, and the Pentagon’s own after-action review described the Afghanistan withdrawal as disorganized, unsupported by adequate intelligence, and lacking contingency planning.
14. 13 Service Members Killed in Kabul: U.S. Marine Corps and DoD casualty reports confirmed the August 26, 2021 Abbey Gate bombing killed 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation operation.
15. Equipment Lost in Withdrawal: GAO and DoD Inspector General reports detailed billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military equipment left behind during the 2021 withdrawal, much of it later documented in Taliban propaganda footage.
16. Federal Charges Filed: DOJ filings from the U.S. District Court for D.C. listed charges including attempted murder of U.S. service members, use of a firearm in a violent crime, and assault on federal personnel.
17. Suspension of Afghan Immigration Processing: Statements from the White House and DHS confirmed a temporary freeze pending a full policy and security review following the attack.
18. Mayor Bowser & FBI Statements: Both the FBI director and the Mayor of Washington, D.C., publicly confirmed the attack was targeted and that the suspect was not cooperating with investigators.

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Jimmy Schwartz is a contributor to the Montgomery County Republican Club and Direct Line News

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