For three months now, the National Guard has been patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., as part of President Trump’s effort to reduce crime in cities across the country.
The deployment has been controversial (some blue dot Democrats despise anyone in uniform), but it’s been effective. Former Breitbart News reporter Kristina Wong, now a spokeswoman for the Department of War, posted on November 27, “Crime HAS gone down. A nearby street is no longer covered in glass from car break-ins every weekend. Gangs of masked men on bikes in a nearby alley no longer hang out there. I feel safe again.”
So, we can thank all the men and women of the National Guard, even as we especially bless the memory of Sarah Beckstrom, who gave her country her all when she was just 20 years old. At a time when many young people are drifting through school or TikTok, Sarah had purpose. Two years ago, fresh out of Webster County High School, she joined the 863rd Military Police Company, 111th Engineer Brigade, of the West Virginia Army National Guard. Her career ambition was to work at the FBI.
Yet on November 26, Specialist Beckstrom and Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, himself just 24, were on duty at the Farragut West Metro train station when they were ambushed and shot by a gun-wielding jihadist.
So, even as we salute the final repose of this admirable young woman, we pray for the full recovery of this admirable young man. They both have made solemn sacrifices on the altar of duty.
Duty. In today’s culture, that’s a word we don’t hear often. We hear too much about rights and entitlements, but not so much about responsibility and duty.
Yet duty, along with honor and country, are the building blocks of civilization. We mustn’t fool ourselves: If we can’t have order and obligation, we have nothing. The 19th century American poet and novelist Louisa May Alcott put it well, “I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was duty.”
Speaking of duty, this past week saw the anniversary of World War Two’s Battle of Tarawa, fought in the Pacific against Japan from November 20-23, 1943. In a mere 76 hours of combat, some 1,000 Americans were killed, and thousands more wounded. Those Americans did their duty to the utmost.
Back then, the country was shocked by the number of casualties in such a brief period—a shock made all the more shocking because Uncle Sam relaxed war censorship and released grim photos of his dead nephews on the beach. The Commander-in-Chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, made the disclosure decision himself: The American people had to know better what the fighting was like and what were its consequences. War is hell.
One of the chroniclers of that hell was Robert Sherrod, an embedded reporter for Time and Life magazines. In 1944, he published Tarawa: The Story of a Battle, in which he not only honored the American combatants, but considered the contrast with stateside civilians.
A U.S. Marine is seen throwing a hand grenade during the battle on the Japanese-held island of Tarawa in November 1943. (Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
Until the gruesome coverage of Tarawa, he wrote, “Many Americans had never been led to expect anything but an easy war.” The truth, of course, was that America was protected from the worst of the fighting; neither the Japanese nor Germans were bombing our cities and factories. It was all to the good that ordinary Americans could go about their lives—paying taxes, of course, and many of them working in war industries—without having to hide in a trench or shelter and dig out from rubble.
Still, to Sherrod, the contrast between battlefront and homefront was jarring. Back from Tarawa, he wrote, “I found a nation wallowing in unprecedented prosperity.” Indeed, the surge in war spending had created an economic boom, which included the dark arts of wheeling and dealing: “Men lobbying for special privilege swarmed around a Congress, afraid to tax the people’s new-found, inflationary wealth.” And so, Sherrod concluded, “The truth was that many Americans were not prepared psychologically to accept the cruel facts of war.”
Mercifully, today, we are not at war in a formal sense, although brave National Guards, on duty this very morning, can attest that we aren’t quite at peace. Indeed, across the country, millions of first responders are on duty today, and there’s a statistical certainty that some will be killed or injured soon.
So, yes, there is a kind of war going on. A war against chaos and criminality, including imported jihadism.
Fortunately, we have guardians on the ramparts, doing their dutiful darnedest to keep us safe. Those of us fortunate enough to live comfortable lives owe much to these brave centurions. We should thank God for making men and women who are willing to risk everything for our safety—and we should thank them, too, directly.
Of course, we can do more that that: We can support policies that deal justly with the killer and that keep future killers out of our midst.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty for the killer, in keeping with the administration’s tough line on capital punishment.
The death penalty is controversial, not because it doesn’t work, but because it does work—some Democratic politicians, being objectively pro-criminal, simply hate the idea of getting tough on criminals.
And there’s more that needs to be done: Obviously we need tougher vetting, including closely scrutinized loyalty oaths—and if that’s not sufficient, we need mass deportations. In fact, we need the tough-mindedness of the long-neglected Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which this author has praised repeatedly.
So even if we’re not in some dangerous line of duty, we have work to do, supporting the rule of law and law enforcement. That’s one way we can honor Sarah Beckstrom, fulfilling the mission to which she gave her life.
Members of the National Guard stand in line near the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial during the dignified transfer of Spec. Sarah Beckstrom on November 27, 2025, in Washington, DC. Beckstrom was one of the two National Guard members shot Wednesday near the White House. The second, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, is critically wounded. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
A makeshift memorial set up in honor of the two National Guard service members shot near the Farragut West Metro Station in Washington, DC, on November 28, 2025. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
That poem by Louisa May Alcott ends with, “Toil on, sad heart, courageously/ And thou shall find thy dream to be/ A noonday light and truth to thee.”
For the slain hero, God Himself is visible in the noonday light, welcoming the faithful soul to sit by His throne. As Trump said of Sarah on Thursday night, “She’s looking down at us right now.”
We can’t all be in uniform, but we can all dare to do our duty. That would bring a smile to the angelic face of Sarah Beckstrom.
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