President Joe Biden made the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan contingent on a date, not circumstances, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow.

“Joe Biden did not have an exit strategy,” Blackburn stated, adding, “He had a date he wanted to be out by, which was September 11. And as … the Taliban had said for years, ‘You might have the clocks, but we’ve got the time.'”

Blackburn went on to say, “President Trump and Secretary Pompeo had an exit strategy, and the Biden administration threw this aside. They were not working on threat assessments or conditions-based [withdrawal]. They moved forward with a date and a narrative, and now, we have an issue where you have Afghanistan falling to the Taliban, China, and Russia.”

Blackburn said evacuation of Americans in peril and their allies — including Afghans who worked in the U.S. embassy, interpreters, and spies — from Afghanistan is “priority number one.” She warned of worsening conditions for women in Afghanistan in the event of Taliban imposition of Shariah law. 

“It is regrettable [to see Afghanistan] falling to the Taliban [and] the Taliban moving so quickly,” she remarked. “It shows you how they were laying in wait for the U.S. to begin the exit, and then, they started to topple these provincial capitals one at a time. I fear for those that had supported the U.S. efforts and for the women and children that are in this country because we know that [the Talban] is going to implement … Sharia law.”

Women and girls “are no longer going to be allowed to go to school, to be in a business, to go to work, [or] to have a job,” Blackburn remarked.

The circumstances of the U.S. withdrawal provide geopolitical opportunities to the Chinese Communist Party, Blackburn assessed. “The Chinese are moving forward aggressively — as are the Russians and others — to fill this void,” she said. “They sense weak leadership.”

“The whole thing … could have been avoided,” Blackburn determined. “This would not have happened if [the withdrawal] was threat assessment- and conditions-based.”

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