America has another Gold Star family: The Beckstroms of West Virginia

By SUZANNE DOWNING

America has another Gold Star family tonight.

The Beckstroms of West Virginia never asked for this distinction, never imagined it would be bestowed upon them, and never wanted to join the ranks of parents who have buried a child who wore our nation’s uniform. Their daughter, Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, just 20 years old, died after being gunned down two blocks from the White House while serving her country.

Her fellow Guardsman, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, is still fighting for his life as I write these words. His survival is uncertain. The bullet wounds they sustained were not battlefield injuries. They were shot on the streets of our nation’s capitaL, one of the most heavily policed, tightly monitored, and politically controlled cities in the country.

And yet we are told, insistently and relentlessly, that the real threat to democracy is President Donald Trump. That the real fascist is the man who was nearly assassinated in the summer of 2024. We are told that the danger comes from the Right, even as bullet after bullet flies toward conservatives, servicemembers, and anyone who dares to live outside the ideological lines drawn by the American Left.

The president was shot, and another shooter was stopped short of killing him this year. Corey Competore was shot at Butler, Penn. and died. Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. And now young Sarah Beckstrom is dead — shot while wearing the uniform of the United States and endeavoring to keep the peace in the DC war zone.

These are not abstractions. These are not metaphors. These are political assassinations.

Still, the talking heads and keyboard warriors accuse the Right of violence. They wag their fingers. They use the word “fascist” like to describe us. They call conservatives “Nazis” and paint swastikas on their homes.

But the blood on the pavement in Washington, DC this Thanksgiving week tells a different story.

It is a bitter irony that as the Left lectures the nation about “threats to democracy,” the uniformed defenders of this democracy are being ambushed in the shadow of the White House. It is a bitter irony that the same movement screaming that Trump is a dictator cannot bring itself to acknowledge the actual violence happening at the hands of individuals who hate America, and who act on that hatred.

And yes, it is a bitter irony that some of the very elected officials who undermine law enforcement daily, while demonizing the US military as dangerous or extremist, continue to sit in Congress despite their overtly seditious rhetoric.

The “seditious six” on Capitol Hill continue to inflame, divide, and excuse every form of political violence carried out against their opponents. And Alaska’s own Sen. Lisa Murkowski appears to be their apologist, jumping into the fray to say the Department of War has no right to call back Sen. Mark Kelly to duty so he can answer to the charge of undermining military order.

This is the environment our young Guardsmen were working in. This is the climate in which Sarah Beckstrom took her last breath.

And now we learn more about the man who allegedly pulled the trigger: an Afghan refugee who entered the US. under President Joe Biden’s wide-open resettlement policies following the chaotic 2021 withdrawal. According to official reports, he lives in Bellingham, Wash., and drove across the country to Washington, DC, where he opened fire on our soldiers. This is not an isolated failure. This is the predictable result of a government that threw open the gates without vetting, accountability, or even the basic competence needed to ensure the safety of the American people, let alone the men and women who guard the seat of our government.

Spc. Beckstrom enlisted in 2023. A kid, really, full of promise, and with the kind of heart and love of country that drives someone to put on a uniform when so many of her peers choose apathy instead. She was doing her job. She was serving her country. She was protecting a city that could not protect itself and that did not have her back. She’s the person the “seditious six” were speaking to when they advised soldiers that they could disobey orders.

America must decide what this moment means. We can keep pretending that political violence is random. We can keep pretending that DC is “safe.” We can keep pretending that the only danger comes from the Right. Or we can face the truth: There is a sickness in this country, and it is not coming from the people who want to preserve law and order.

A Gold Star family now sits in West Virginia grieving their daughter, planning a funeral instead of a homecoming. Spc. Wolfe’s family waits at a hospital bed, praying he survives the night.

If this nation cannot unite around protecting the men and women who protect us, then what exactly are we preserving?

Tonight, the Beckstrom family mourns. And so should America.

Suzanne Downing is editor of The Alaska Story.