Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan as an "arbitrary" decision.
Speaking to host John Catsimatidis of "The Cats Roundtable" radio show on WABC 770 AM on Sunday, Pompeo said, "it is a continuing challenge that we face in Afghanistan as a result of the arbitrary political decision that President Biden made to set a date...to get out of that country."
Biden in late August officially announced an end to the Afghanistan war, "the longest war in American history."
"Let me be clear," the president added, "leaving [Aug. 31] is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives."
Thirteen U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans were killed in a suicide bombing attack days earlier near Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Pompeo said the withdrawal was did not have to be a debacle.
"It has real ramifications for American security as we move forward," he told Catsimatidis.
"The threat of terrorism from abroad has certainly increased.… It's my sense that they made the decision … to leave on a date certain and what occurred to us after that was a sign of stubbornness on the part of the president of the United States. When he could see that the Taliban was going to take over and the government … was going to fall, he chose not to respond and … [provide] the resources necessary to get Americans out. It's incomprehensible to me. It's certainly not the plan that the Trump Administration had."
"Afghanistan and the decisions at the [Mexican] border are part and parcel of a leader who is not prepared to protect American security interests," Pompeo added.
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