John (11:37)
All right, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. Many on the left say Trump needlessly put the Guard members in harm's way. Some say the blame lies solely with the shooter. Others argue Trump is wrong to punish all Afghan immigrants for the shooting. In the Atlantic, Juliette Kayem said Trump was warned that members of the military could be attacked before an Afghan refugee yesterday shot and seriously injured two National Guard members who had been deployed by President Trump to Washington, D.C. military commanders had warned that their deployment represented an easy target opportunity for grievance based violence, cam wrote. Commanders in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the highly visible mission in D.C. argued that this could put them in danger. The Justice Department countered that the risk was merely speculative. It wasn't. Even if the deployments to D.C. were legal, they lack a clear mandate and metrics of success and have vague rules of engagement and ill defined operating procedures. And morale is low among part time volunteer soldiers who have had to leave home to patrol the streets of an American city that Trump doesn't like, KM said. We are not at war now, but Trump's use of the National Guard suggests he thinks we are not at peace either. The National Guard is stranded somewhere on this battlefield of partisan politics. They are not ready for this arena and we should never have asked them to be, the New York Times editorial board wrote about the uniquely American heartbreak of yet another tragedy. Our knowledge of the suspect and his motives in Wednesday's shootings remain limited. He was described by a friend as a young man troubled by mental illness, as is so often the case in similar crimes. We also have learned that he came to the United States in 2021 after the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration, the board said. America, however, is stronger for its long tradition of welcoming immigrants. And as awful as one man's actions apparently were, a crackdown on people here legally would be a mistake. This is especially true of any backlash against many of the Afghans who worked for years alongside American troops, civil soc groups, aid organizations and journalists. There will be Americans who note that this tragedy could have been averted if Ms. Beckstrom and Mr. Wolf had not been needlessly deployed to Washington in August on the order of President Trump. No one, including the president, is responsible for this tragedy except for the perpetrator, the board wrote. The next several days will provide more information about the attack. For now, we know it is a heartbreaking event for two families of young Americans serving their country, and we know that political violence has become alarmingly regular in the United States. All Americans should condemn that. In Bloomberg, Patricia Lopez argued revetting hundreds of thousands of refugees is an overreaction. The impulse for retribution is powerful, and after such a senseless act of violence, Trump is probably far from alone in that impulse. But it is fundamentally unfair to consider punishing an estimated 190,000 Afghans for the alleged actions of one, lopez said. Wholesale deportations of those Afghans already here would also be a betrayal with grave consequences for our own national security. Breaking our promise to these Afghans who helped the US Wage its longest war would make it much harder for US troops to gain the trust of locals who know the language, customs and intelligence so critical to success in foreign wars. Trump insists that we must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here and add benefit to our country, lopez wrote. That is a wild overreaction to the tragic event that has shaken the country. There is a difference between announcing an overhaul of the vetting process where there is always room for improvement, and upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of law abiding refugees, not to mention potentially millions of other immigrants. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right say Trump is right to scrutinize the immigration system after the shooting. Some say Afghan refugees should not face retribution for the shooting. Others accuse the Biden administration and Congress of negligence. The New York Post editorial board wrote that an Afghani lunatic proves we must totally overhaul our immigration system. The details of whether and how the suspect got vetted are for this purpose. Beside the point. The far larger issue is the insane proliferation of programs that admit foreigners, each with different standards for everything, not just for whether the authorities adequately assess the risks. The board said the suspect seems to have entered with his family under a special immigrant visa program following Biden's disastrous bug out. But that's just one program that focuses on asylum claims. The nation has dozens of systems, large and small for legal admission, a jury rigged patchwork because politicians kept adding new ones. Rather than rethink everything, the foundation of the system should be supporting immigration as it benefits America and Americans. Instead, our decades old base immigration law heavily favors family reunification, which is routinely gamed into chain migration, using up the legal slots that could increase, say, the skills of the nation's workforce, the board wrote. President Donald Trump is thundering about all manner of drastic changes in the wake of the DC attack. As usual, his instinct is well founded, but presidential action alone can't yield a permanent fix. Until the nation can manage a top to bottom overhaul of immigration, we'll keep careening from one migrant mess to another, the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued. The shooting shouldn't condemn all who assisted the US and now live here. The reason for the suspect's alleged turn from partner to terrorist, especially as a husband and father of five in the US is an important question to answer. The FBI will be looking for links to a domestic terrorist cell or international contacts, though he might simply have been disgruntled on his own about his adopted country, the board said. When and how the shooter was approved for entry will become clearer and no doubt an orderly withdrawal would have allowed more careful investigation. This is one more cost of the Biden administration's Afghan failure. The Trump administration said it has paused processing immigration applications from Afghanistan, and Mr. Trump said the attack justifies his mass deportation policy. But it would be a shame if this single act of betrayal became the excuse for deporting all Afghan refugees in the us, the board wrote. Tens of thousands are building new lives here in peace and are contributing to their communities. They shouldn't be blamed for the violent act of one man. Collective punishment of all Afghans in the US won't make America safer, and it might embitter more against the United States. In National Review, Noah Rothman said the shooting was a terror attack. The attacker was an Afghan national who was one of roughly 200,000 Afghans brought into the United States in a slapdash fashion following Joe Biden's botched withdrawal from Central Asia in 2021. His asylum application began under Biden, but it was certified while Donald Trump was in office, Rothman wrote. He might have been subject to additional scrutiny had Congress passed the Afghan Adjustment act, which was introduced in both chambers of Congress but never passed. In short, anyone who wants to blame their domestic political opponents for this act of bloodshed will encounter a target rich environment. What no one in good faith could argue is that this terrorist attack, and it was a terror attack designed to intimidate and suppress American law enforcement, was inspired by the provocative presence of uniformed military personnel on the district's streets. But that is what some claimed, Rothman said. What can be said for certain is that in the absence of Biden's withdrawal and Congress lethargy, it would have been far less likely that this terror attack would have occurred. Far too many Americans own those inauspicious acts, and the blame that goes around is diluted as a result. But this is not a tragedy. It is an atrocity. Alright, let's head over to Isaac for his take.
