You Need to Read This

I just read this essay on the shooting of the two National Guardsmen in Washington, DC, and you should do.

The thesis is that the shooting was not about terrorism, nor was it about immigration.

Rather it was about a kid who was recruited by the CIA into a death squad, and that this came over to the United States with him.

………

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 “Zero Unit”—paramilitary 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’s said he “suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.” 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 and the Taliban took over, we brought him here—and apparently did nothing to address what we’d done to his mind. 

………

Lakanwal served in a death squad. American veterans were sent to Iraq to kick down doors, raid homes, and kill people’s 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’t just switch it off.

The evidence is overwhelming: what we make people do in these wars destroys them. And destroyed people do violence. Doesn’t matter if they were born in Kandahar or Kentucky—the damage is the same.