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Commentary By Charles Fain Lehman

Trump’s DC Guard Deployment Didn’t Fuel Violence — Biden’s Afghan Vetting Breakdown Did

Public Safety Crime Control, Policing

Afghan national charged in National Guard shooting was evacuated under Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal despite red flags

Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal was formally charged last week in the horrific shooting of National Guardsmen Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom in front of a Washington, D.C. metro stop. Lakanwal allegedly murdered Beckstrom in the shooting, while Wolfe is reportedly still struggling to recover; Attorney General Pam Bondi has indicated that the Department of Justice intends to seek the death penalty.

But while Lakanwal has his day in court, a bigger debate is still raging over who is actually to blame for the murder: the shooter, or President Donald Trump. In the wake of the shooting, many on the left rushed to pin the blame on Trump.

Critics argued that the president’s National Guard deployment was a political stunt that had put Guardsmen like Wolfe and Beckstrom in the line of fire unnecessarily. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, asserted that the shootings came "after months of warnings that deployments would inflame tensions." The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer took to X just hours after the shooting to label Trump’s deployment a "political show" and assert that "these poor guardsmen should never have been deployed."

Continue reading the entire piece here at FoxNews.com

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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images