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Notes -
Two National Guardsman shot in DC.
Situation is still developing... conflicting reports about deaths. Trump has already requested 500 more guardsmen to be deployed in the capital. I'm afraid that any commentary on my part will be pure speculation: I'll edit this OP as more information comes to light. Apologies for the shortness of this initial post.
I would expect ICE to be shot at, especially during active operations: but the National Guard? They're literally doing nothing but stand around. They're dads and uncles pulling overtime shifts away from their real jobs, not stormtroopers. I'm highly suspecting some sort of mental illness or dumb radicalization, but I'll refrain on coming to conclusions for now.
Edit 1: Suspect has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a Afghan national evacuated back in 2021.
Edit 2: Speculatively, a linkedin profile of the same name seems to point him as being connected to a bunch of American NGOs. I'm always skeptical of these - the world is big enough for strangers to have the same names - but the face on the profile seems to match the suspect.
Or perhaps I don't have an eye for Afghans, and they all look the same to me.
Why did Lakanwal drive all the way to DC to shoot two National Guardsman? There were many other National Guard deployments between his home and DC. Edit: I'm not questioning his motive to kill members of the NG. I'm questioning why he drove 40 hours from Washington State to Washington D.C.
Guess 1: It's symbolic. DC is more "America" than Portland and the attack was against America. But if so, why not wait one more day and do it on Thanksgiving proper? Even more symbolic that way.
Guess 2: It's a probing attack for a bigger event later on. Probably shouldn't have let himself get taken alive if that's the case...
Guess 3: He had a personal beef against one of the Guardsmen? Was one of them deployed in Afghanistan, he saw them on the TV once, and made it his mission to take revenge for something?
Guess 4: He is actually a Trump agent. After the "Sedition" video, Trump activated him to attack a couple national guards to show his opponents just how dangerous it is to call the military the enemies of the American people. No one was supposed to get really hurt...
Guess 5: He's actually the most patriotic of Americans and took it upon himself to lead the uprising of the American people against the Tyrannical Trump regime, as prompted by the "Sedition" video.
If you can't tell, my guesses are getting wilder and wilder, because I haven't settled on anything I find very plausible. Anyone else feel the same?
Alternatively: he's a traumatized nutcase and because he's brown the killing is or becomes or must be political.
If he were white we'd just shrug and ultimately say he was nuts.
The NG in DC under Trump's orders is sufficiently right-coded that everyone except the left and the MSM would be assuming it was left-wing political violence until proven otherwise. Some of those people would claim that shooting a right-coded target is per se left-wing political violence regardless of the shooter's actual motives - there are still people on the Motte saying this about Thomas Crooks.
Sure, his being a nut found expression through shooting the National Guard, but the difference is that because he's brown it's assumed to be a trait of his racial identity and/or part of an organized plot.
Compare the Cybertruck bombing, which was similar in involving a US Special Forces soldier who served overseas who drove a long distance to launch a nutty but (in that case explicitly) politically motivated protest attack, involved a white guy so nobody said "THIS IS A NATIONAL CRISIS WE NEED TO INVESTIGATE EVERY SPECIAL FORCES VETERAN." There's some mumbling about overheated political rhetoric and stochastic terrorism, which nobody really takes seriously. Or, for that matter, much speculation about intelligence connections.
An Afghan is assumed to be some mix of congenitally terroristic, part of some organized group, both necessarily related to his origin.
The idea that veterans are dangerous has been around for a very long time. Here's a 2012 article decrying it, and it's obviously much older than that; First Blood is based on the idea. And in fact the idea of some sort of plot by a group of veterans was involved in the cybertruck bombing WAS investigated.
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He's nuts, for sure, but even crazy people have some kind of internal logic . I'm not asking, "Why did he attack the National Guards?" I'm asking, "Why did he attack the National Guard in DC instead of the ones in Portland, California, Chicago, Tennessee, etc." Or is DC the only place they are actually deployed, in which case what is with the Liberal histrionics?
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