{"id":10343,"date":"2025-12-26T20:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T04:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/?p=10343"},"modified":"2025-12-26T20:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T04:35:07","slug":"638-12-27-corbin-trent-a-hard-truth-about-the-dc-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/2025\/10343\/","title":{"rendered":"#638 12\/27 Corbin Trent A Hard Truth About the DC Shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corbin Trent, America’s Undoing<\/strong><\/p>\n

November 30,2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, two West Virginia National Guard members were shot near the White House. One of them, 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died. The other remains in critical condition.<\/p>\n

The shooter was a 29-year-old Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He worked for us. For a decade. He was part of what the CIA calls a \u201cZero Unit\u201d\u2014paramilitary forces trained and backed by American intelligence. Human rights groups have another name for these units: death squads.<\/p>\n

According to the New York Times, a childhood friend of Lakanwal\u2019s said he \u201csuffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.\u201d His family told investigators he has PTSD from the fighting he did on our behalf.<\/p>\n

We trained him to kill. We pointed him at targets. We made him part of a unit known for brutality. And then when the war ended and the Taliban took over, we brought him here\u2014and apparently did nothing to address what we\u2019d done to his mind.<\/p>\n

And now a young woman from West Virginia is dead.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what nobody wants to say: Rahmanullah Lakanwal is not an immigration story. He\u2019s a war story. The same story we\u2019ve been living with American veterans for twenty years.<\/p>\n

Since 9\/11, at least 15 confirmed mass shootings and targeted attacks on police or military personnel have been perpetrated by U.S. military veterans. These attacks have killed 128 people and wounded nearly 200 more. Veterans make up about 7% of the adult population\u2014but they account for 26% of mass shooters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a coincidence. That\u2019s a cost. The cost of what we ask people to do.<\/p>\n

Lakanwal served in a death squad. American veterans were sent to Iraq to kick down doors, raid homes, and kill people\u2019s families. They were sent to Afghanistan to call in drone strikes on wedding parties. They served at checkpoints where the rules of engagement meant shooting first and asking questions never. We ask human beings to do inhuman things, and then we act surprised when they can\u2019t just switch it off.<\/p>\n

The evidence is overwhelming: what we make people do in these wars destroys them. And destroyed people do violence. Doesn\u2019t matter if they were born in Kandahar or Kentucky\u2014the damage is the same.<\/p>\n

Look at who they target. Veterans don\u2019t just commit mass shootings at higher rates\u2014they shoot their fellow soldiers. They ambush police officers. They attack the very institutions they served. In Dallas in 2016, a veteran killed five cops. Ten days later in Baton Rouge, another veteran killed three more. Fort Hood has been the site of two mass shootings by service members targeting their own.<\/p>\n

And now an Afghan who served alongside U.S. forces shot two National Guard members in D.C.<\/p>\n

The violence turns inward\u2014toward the uniforms, toward the system. American or Afghan, the pattern holds. What does that tell you about what we\u2019re doing to these people?<\/p>\n

We break them. Then we lose track of them. Then we act surprised when they break others.<\/p>\n

And what are we doing right now? Starting another one. While supporting genocide in Gaza. While arming the Israelis to do things we\u2019d call war crimes if anyone else did them.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2014the guy who promised to end the forever wars\u2014has spent the last several months building up the largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean since the Cold War. He says it\u2019s about drugs. He\u2019s been sinking boats off the coast of Venezuela. At least 21 strikes since September. More than 80 people killed. And we\u2019ve seen no evidence that most of these people were trafficking anything.<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s declared Venezuelan airspace \u201cclosed in its entirety.\u201d Venezuela called it what it is: a colonialist threat. International law experts say it\u2019s illegal. And Trump is telling service members we\u2019ll have \u201cland operations\u201d there \u201cvery soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is about power. It\u2019s about oil. It\u2019s about regime change. Trump isn\u2019t even pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you know the drug thing is bullshit. The same man who announced Saturday that Venezuelan airspace is closed? On Friday he announced he\u2019s pardoning Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n

You might not know that name. Hern\u00e1ndez is the former president of Honduras. He\u2019s sitting in a U.S. federal prison right now\u2014convicted of conspiring to traffic 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Prosecutors said he took \u201ccocaine-fueled bribes\u201d and \u201cprotected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four hundred tons of cocaine. And Trump is pardoning him while claiming he\u2019s going to war with Venezuela over drugs.<\/p>\n

Trump is also working to put a narco-government back in power in Honduras. He endorsed the right-wing candidate in their upcoming election\u2014the same party that Hern\u00e1ndez led. He\u2019s threatened to withhold U.S. aid if the left-wing candidate wins.<\/p>\n

This is what \u201cwar on drugs\u201d looks like in 2025: pardoning convicted drug traffickers and propping up their political parties while sinking fishing boats in the Caribbean and calling it national security.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been at this for ten years. I helped recruit Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for Congress. I worked on Bernie\u2019s campaigns. I thought we were building something that could stop this machine.<\/p>\n

Still, here we are again. Another young woman dead in D.C. at the hands of a man we trained to kill and then abandoned to his trauma. Another war being manufactured on lies. Another generation about to learn what we learned in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam\u2014that the blood doesn\u2019t stay over there. It comes home. It always comes home.<\/p>\n

An estimated 29% of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will develop PTSD at some point in their lives. That\u2019s nearly one in three. And we\u2019re about to create a new generation of broken minds in Venezuela, for what? So, Trump can tweet about being tough? So, Chevron can get access to oil fields?<\/p>\n

The shooter in D.C. had a wife and five children that we are considering deporting. They bear no responsibility for the actions of their father or husband. Correctly, we wouldn\u2019t dream of doing that to the family of a war veteran.<\/p>\n

Trump is using this tragedy to justify cracking down on Afghan refugees. That\u2019s the wrong lesson. This isn\u2019t an immigration problem. It\u2019s an endless-war problem.<\/p>\n

Lakanwal caved to the same emotional wounds that many American veterans have borne since we started these wars. He\u2019s not an outlier\u2014he\u2019s part of the pattern. The pattern is what happens when you train people to kill, expose them to the worst of humanity, and then abandon them to figure it out on their own.<\/p>\n

We keep creating the conditions for this violence\u2014American and Afghan alike\u2014and then pointing fingers at the individuals who carry it out. We blame the broken instead of the machine that breaks them.<\/p>\n

How about we stop the damn war machine?<\/p>\n

Look, if we\u2019re going to send people to fight, we owe them something when they come home. Real support. Not a check and a waiting list. Not a brief psychiatric hold and their gun handed back to them.<\/p>\n

And the people we recruit to help us in these wars\u2014the interpreters, the soldiers, the families who risked everything\u2014we owe them the same. We made the trauma. We own it.<\/p>\n

Are these wars worth the price we continue to pay?<\/p>\n

Iraq wasn\u2019t worth it. Afghanistan wasn\u2019t worth it. Twenty years. Trillions of dollars. Millions dead. Minds shattered on both sides. For what?<\/p>\n

And war with Venezuela won\u2019t be worth it either. There is no amount of oil, no political victory, no strongman fantasy that justifies what we\u2019re considering.<\/p>\n

The blood will come home. It always does.<\/p>\n

How many more Sarah Beckstroms are we willing to sacrifice before we figure that out?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to build, not destroy.<\/p>\n

There is so much we could be building here at home. We need more healthcare. We need housing. We need modern infrastructure. We need high-quality childcare centers. We need affordable food.<\/p>\n

Neither Venezuela nor Maduro is standing between the American people and prosperity. In fact, the people taking from us at home are the same ones itching for yet another profitable war.<\/p>\n

We can build a better nation, or we can do this again. Another war. Another generation of trauma. Another round of violence coming home.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corbin Trent, America’s Undoing November 30,2025   Last Wednesday, two West Virginia National Guard members were shot near the White House. One of them, 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died. The other remains in critical condition. The shooter was a 29-year-old Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He worked for us. For a decade. He was part of what the CIA calls a \u201cZero Unit\u201d\u2014paramilitary forces trained and backed by American intelligence. Human rights groups have another name for these units: death squads. According to the New York Times, a childhood friend of Lakanwal\u2019s said he \u201csuffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.\u201d His family told investigators he has PTSD from the fighting he did on our behalf. We trained him to kill. We pointed him at targets. We made him part of a unit known for brutality. And then when the war ended …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,45,467],"tags":[476],"class_list":["post-10343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-forum","category-international-politics","tag-corbin-trent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10344,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10343\/revisions\/10344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us-chinaforum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}