ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- It's been less than a week since the tragic shooting of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers by an Afghan refugee in Washington D.C. and already many Americans are pretty far down the road in terms of casting blame and discerning motive.

We're even starting to debate what would be historic and radical changes to our asylum system in the hopes of keeping anyone who would do us harm out of the United States. Sadly, the shooting plays into one of the policy goals for President Donald Trump has long wanted to get rid of immigrants and refugees -- especially those who are not, as he puts it, a "net asset" to the United States. As a result of the shooting, the Trump administration has frozen all asylum applications and announced plans to review the cases of hundreds of thousands of green card holders from 19 countries that the White House considers dangerous and dysfunctional.

A nation full of amateur private investigators needs to press on the brakes and slow down. There is still a lot we don't know about the specific case of 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal.

We don't know why Lakanwal drove across the country to the nation's capital from his home in Bellingham, Wash. Or why, on the day before Thanksgiving, he pulled out a handgun and opened fire on 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, who was killed, and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, who was critically injured.

We don't know if the Afghan national was improperly vetted by the Biden administration before he entered the country in 2021 as part of "Operation Allies Welcome" or if he was improperly vetted by the Trump administration before being granted asylum in April.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said recently Lakanwal was likely radicalized on U.S. soil after he arrived in this country. If so, then all the blame shifting is silly and pointless. It's possible that neither Biden officials nor Trump officials missed anything, because there was nothing to miss.

We all need to take a deep breath and ask ourselves: What if we've got this whole story wrong?

The Republican narrative is that this whole thing is former President Joe Biden's fault because it was his administration that allowed Lakanwal to enter the United States after the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in August 2021. The alleged assailant signed his death warrant when he risked his life to help U.S. forces fight the Taliban.

The Democratic narrative is that Trump is to blame for giving Lakanwal asylum in April 2025, and for deploying National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to act as pseudo-law enforcement officers, even though they were unarmed and didn't have the authority to arrest anyone.

Usually, the competing storylines battle it out until the louder one drowns out the other. In this case, however, it seems likely that both narratives are incorrect.

I would put my money on a third explanation. It suggests that this story isn't really about politics as much as it is economics. According to this theory, Lakanwal wasn't "radicalized" but rather demoralized by the economic stress of not being about to support himself, his wife, and their five children while living in a low-rent neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest.

Brian Mann, a reporter for National Public Radio, interviewed a resettlement volunteer in Bellingham, Wash., who works with Afghan refugees and who knows Lakanwal. According to Mann, the volunteer said that Lakanwal was "hopeful and outgoing" when they met in 2022. But by 2023, after failing to find permanent employment, he struggled with "cultural isolation" and became "more isolated, behaving more and more erratically."

I have a hunch that this is the real story. It has nothing to do with terrorism or refugee policy. It's about someone who came to the United States with big dreams, and perhaps a sense that Americans owed him a debt. Then something went wrong. He lost his job, his pride, and his hope. His vision of the American Dream crumbled. Unable to meet his obligations, not unlike a lot of U.S.-born blue-collar workers, he fell into despair.

I bet that Lakanwal began to resent the United States and specifically the U.S. military -- an institution for which he sacrificed so much. I also bet that was triggered upon seeing National Guard troops in uniform, and those two young people from West Virginia became a symbol of all he resented.

Lakanwal may have been born in a foreign country. But his economic distress was made in America.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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