A joyful holiday was once again overshadowed by politically charged violence — or was it? The Afghan refugee who killed one National Guardsman and critically wounded another was himself a veteran of America’s war in Afghanistan. Those who knew him say he suffered from PTSD, and that it may have played a role in what happened. On the other hand, he did drive across the country to carry out his ambush, a level of premeditation that makes it impossible for anyone at a distance — including me — to assume a simple explanation.
That didn’t stop the president from leaping to his favorite target: immigrants from poor countries. His response was to demand investigations of every Afghan immigrant and to halt immigration from every “Third World country.” To add insult to injury, he has also called for a critical review of all green-card holders.
It is a terrible failure of leadership. What we need is not sweeping ethnic suspicion, but focused attention on the actual sources of lethal violence that have become disturbingly normal in American life. National security is not strengthened by broad-brush ethnic cleansing. It is strengthened when our intelligence agencies do the work for which they are trained.
Send the National Guard home. Let the police do the work they are trained to do.
Thank you for hitting the nail on the head, and naming– by national office, if not by name– the person who failed in his duty. I keep asking God to help me be a part of the solution to our national problem, but I still don’t know how to do it.
Judith Armstrong, St. John’s (Episcopal) Mission, Junction City, KS