The shooting of two members of the US National Guard in Washington DC yesterday comes as no surprise, given the rhetorical warfare that’s been growing in intensity there ever since President Donald Trump reassumed office at the beginning of the year.
This week has been particularly bad on that front, with the national conversation entering what I would gauge to be genuinely dangerous territory, primarily because you now have senior democrats insinuating that members of the military and law enforcement are being given, and are wittingly or unwittingly, carrying out illegal orders.
Along with that insinuation are the dual suggestions, one implicit and the other explicit, that servicemen and women should either refuse to follow those orders, or expect to face consequences when – not if – the democrats seize the reins of power once again.
To go back to the beginning of the current bout of heightened hostilities for those who haven’t been following the US discourse lately, last week a group of six democratic senators, representatives and congressmen and women – whom MAGA have characteristically started referring to as the ‘seditious six’ – issued a video with the essential message that members of the military and intelligence community have been pitted against the American public by the current administration, and that they now have a duty to refuse orders and make their protest felt.
I didn’t pay particularly close attention to this initially, but having since gone back and watched the video address (linked below) and read up on the subsequent statements, I have come to the conclusion that it marks something of a substantial escalation in the war of words playing out between the American left and right.
“We want to speak directly to members of the military. And the intelligence community…We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.
“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this constitution. Right now, the threats to our constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”
It goes on, but you get the point.
Some have interpreted this injunction (I’m not sure how else to read, “You must refuse illegal orders”) as referring to the US military’s recent campaign of deadly strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, but I’m not sure that’s accurate, given the democrats claim in the video that the administration is pitting service personnel “against American citizens”.
More likely, it seems to me, the democrats are taking issue with the way in which Trump has made use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard domestically, both to tackle illegal immigration, and to tackle crime in cities that the president has deemed to be underperforming in that regard. Or perhaps, overperforming.
Whatever the case, Trump in typical fashion escalated, posting on Truth Social among other things that the democrats were engaging in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR, punishable by DEATH”. He quickly clarified in response to questions that he wasn’t threatening death, but added that “they’re in serious trouble”.
The democrats involved in the video have since issued their own fiery clarifications. Fiery, because they haven’t been as defensive as you might have expected them to be. Rather, you might say that they’ve continued to heap fuel on the fire. One of the six, former CIA analyst, Senator Elissa Slotkin suggested on national TV that in the state of heightened societal tension, military or law enforcement personnel might “get nervous, get stressed, shoot at American civilians,” adding that it’s a stressful situation both for the officers and for the communities they’re stationed in.
Then comes yesterday’s shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington DC, both of whom are understood to remain in critical condition, but about whom not much else is publicly known as of the time of writing.
More has come to light about their suspected attacker, who’s been identified as 29-year-old Afghanistan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who entered the US in 2021 as part of the relocation programme for Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban. His reason for fleeing the Taliban, it would appear based on reports, is that he worked for a CIA-backed “partner force,” which has stoked speculation about the nature of the incident to new heights.
Regardless of how this particular investigation plays out, that we’re likely to see more incidents like this is clear. The stage is set, and the stakes are high. The administration is made up of nazis and headed up by a tyrant, they say, and the opposition are a band of traitors and snakes in the eyes of its supporters.
It was also yesterday that former Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki hosted former army judge advocate general Glenn Kirschner on her show, The Briefing, and asked him what he, with his expertise, thinks the “consequences” should be for people obeying a commander-in-chief engaging in “complete overreaches in power”.
His response: “They’re following unlawful commands from Donald Trump. And if you’re committing offenses and your defense is going to be ‘I was just following orders’ — You know, that didn’t work out so well at Nuremberg.”
He took issue with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s and FBI Director Kash Patel’s investigation into one of the six, Senator Mark Kelly, since the release of the initial video, concluding with the not-so-veiled threat that “when the rule of law comes back into the light of day, that will have to be tackled. They’ll have to be held accountable for those abuses”.
Clearly, political rhetoric, if not politics itself in the US, has moved from the realm of the merely political, to that of the existential for those involved. That is dangerous territory. Not just for the players, but for the game itself.