Here we go.
Again.
Short version: An Afghan refugee granted domicile in the U.S. following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 is reported to have driven across the country from Washington State, where he lived, to Washington, D.C., where it is alleged he shot two persons serving in the West Virginia National Guard, one a man, the other a young woman.
They were deployed in Washington as part of Trump’s wretechedly excessive, unwarranted occupation of American cities – but yes only those with Democratic Party mayors.
Who is the man who shot and killed the 20-year-old national guardswoman who died after the attack? Why did he do it? What did he think would happen? We will or we won’t learn in the time ahead some of that from a trial or plea agreement, and for now from news coverage of the event and about him.
But these times and history can record, indeed cry out that she was murdered by Donald Trump who, sending her to a place for which there was and for which there is no reason for her to have been or for any guardsman to be, Trump placed her in a line of fire created solely by him, a line of fire drawn straight from the White House.
He provoked this and now his provocation has been rewarded by the shooting and death.
Remove the provocation, rescind the order to deploy or better yet never issue it, and you remove the guard from the scene – you erase the excess of hatred, vitriol, fear, misunderstanding and lies endlessy regurgitated by Trump.
She was 20 and in uniform. He is 79 and a draft dodger, a heel who claimed his phoney medical deferrment not once but five times. Don’t forget that – not for a moment, not for a minute, not today, not tomorrow, not forever.
So far, this has resultled in Trump screaming and play raging that the Afghani man will get what he deserves – that they will all get what they deserve, whoever they all are.
What this man deserves for now is the word alleged, then an investigation of his circumstances, those of the shootings, a grand jury presentation, indictment if that is to follow and then a fair civil criminal trial with all the due proces that attaches – or a plea bargain by competent counsel based on much of this.
Why? Because we are a nation of law and laws and that is how we do things. It is how we do things notwithstanding Trump’s ever more hysterical effort to make the courts his personal Star Chamber.
But no, we do not need this false Cassandra in the White House screaming threats against tens of thousands of people. We do not need him to be threatening mayhem, threatening what is left of an orderly immigration system; bellowing his threats as he works to galvanize and distract with hatred and fear. It is not 1951. We rid ourselves of Tailgun Joe (McCarthy) long ago. Why then this artless reprise?
The only thing profound about this man Trump is his wanton ignorance and willingness to destroy for the sake of itself, to sell his office for tens, hundreds of millions of dollars and use the rest of us with utter contempt.
But law and the criminal justice system persist. They must and will survive the ravings of a man who either doesn’t understand any of this or, more likely though knowing it prefers, much prefers, to create discord, hatred and fear, prefers to scream, prefers to behave like a six-year-old running amok through a restaurant spitting in other people’s soup.
Whatever he is up to always there are the henchmen. Besset at Treasury, Wyckoff in the diplomatic outisphere, Rubio somewhere selling some contradictory half-truth.
In this matter, the henchman is Hegseth.
Trump’s little not-Napolean declares this calls for sending 500 more guardsmen into harms way in Washington, D.C. Well< do put another chip on that man’s sadly tattoed shoulder.
500 more Guardsmen to do what? Stop the man from travelling to D.C. to shoot at guardsmen who should not have been and should not be there in the first place? Go make sense of that.
There is no threat, none – none but the one this woe begotten government conjures.
Why? Why then when this from all and every appearance is the doing of one man for whatever criminal, and/or lunatic reasons impelled him? Why then do we have a government raging at the world when just one bad, sad man did this?
The people of Afghanistan did not do this. All Afghani refugees in this country admitted under accepted legal form did not do this. Muslims here or the world over did not do this.
If you think othewise then probably you think still there were WMD in Iraq?
No, from all we know and from all they will ever likely discover, one man acted alone – entirely so.
To state the obvious, had they not been on the streets of the nation’s capital the guardsman would not have been in harm’s way.
Trump put them there, 2,200 of them, and Hegseth, hate driven know-nothing of military ways and American rights, threatens to increase the threat – the threat to the National Guard – by calling more of them up to be targets while they accomplish nothing but marring the comity of the capital and sister cities.
Measure. Think.
Measure, think and turn away from this further attempt to debase the country, confuse its citizens and spread hate and fear among them -among us.
We are better than that. Or we were or thought we were. Are we still?
Peeling the Onion 