The war in Afghanistan should not have happened the way it did under U.S. intervention. The withdrawal should not have been designed as a rushed political decision under Donald Trump, and it should not have been executed so poorly under Joe Biden. The collapse that followed was predictable. The chaos was avoidable.

The person involved should not have been exposed to that level of violence. After collaborating with U.S. forces and witnessing the killing of his own people, he should have received structured psychological care and permanent support when he arrived in the United States.

Instead, he lived with severe, untreated mental illness.

Then, through political rhetoric that should never be used by anyone holding presidential power, he was reframed as an “enemy within.” Immigrants and traumatized people were vilified, fear was normalized, and resentment was fueled until it turned into hate.

A person in that mental condition should not have had easy access to firearms. The United States should not make it easier to buy a weapon than to access consistent mental health care, especially for someone in crisis.

The National Guard should not have been deployed under a politically driven and unnecessary mandate. They should not have been placed in a situation created by political theater instead of real public safety needs.

And then a life was taken.

A National Guard member went to serve and never came home. A family lost a daughter, a sister, a loved one. Their life was truncated in a moment, but their pain will last forever. No policy failure, no political speech, no institutional excuse will ever return what was taken from them. They will live the rest of their lives with an empty chair, unanswered phone calls, birthdays without her, and a grief that no apology can repair.

The attack did not happen because of one single failure. It happened because every safeguard failed in sequence:

• A reckless war
• A rushed and badly managed withdrawal
• No post-war mental health care
• Political radicalization
• Uncontrolled gun access
• Unnecessary militarization

Each step was a decision. Each step was preventable.

Each one was a “should not.”

This was not an isolated act of violence. It was a systems failure with human victims on both ends, and one family paid the highest possible price.