The shooting  of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers in downtown D.C. and the death of one of them was a horrific act of violence. What  President Trump has done in the aftermath in terms of false history and political exploitation has deepened the tragedy.

Contrary to early Administration speculations that the shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was a convert to Radical Islam, those who know him best in Washington state suggest that he suffered from PTSD and drugs due to his service in a "kill squad" in the Afghan War and especially from stress due to his inability to secure a job that  would cover the expenses of his stateside family.

The President blames the Biden Administration for allowing Mr.Lakanwal to enter the United States along with tens of thousands of other Afghan refugees without any scrutiny or checking.  False! No Afghan came into the U.S. without several stages of checking and interviews. Final approval of Lakanwal's asylum claim was given by Trump not Biden authorities but they failed to give him a full work permit.

Trump not only blames Biden for allowing the shooter into the U.S. He relentlessly blames Biden for the chaotic overall withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The truth is that Trump bears greater responsibility for the conditions of the final Afghan withdrawal.

It was Trump who signed a binding accord with the Taliban to remove all U.S. personnel from Afghanistan by a date certain.  He planned to bring Taliban leaders to Camp David for consultations until Congress blocked this proposal.

Meanwhile Trump reduced U.S. military presence down to a few thousand soldiers. When the Afghan army suddenly collapsed, there were too few U.S. soldiers to protect both Bagram Airbase with all its equipment and the Kabul Airport.  Additional troops were flown in to safeguard Kabul while the series of evacuation flights landed and departed taking away many but not all the Afghans who had served with the U.S. during the war including Lakanwal.

James Matlack lives in Camden