“No one likes where this ended up, but it’s hard to see Republicans winning elections on a campaign promise to go back to war in Afghanistan in 2022 or 2024,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic consultant who has worked for the party’s House campaign arm and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid.

Republicans see little opportunity in digging in on a pro-war position, particularly after 20 years of money and lives lost trying to build a democratic state that collapsed like a house of cards as soon as U.S. forces left.

Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Senate GOP campaign arm, said of the politics of the withdrawal: “It’s hard to tell how it’ll play in the long run.”

But he said the situation paints Biden as a “weak leader” who operates with a “nonchalance” on issues like the border, inflation and now Afghanistan. Taken together, he said, Biden appears “weak, disengaged or just plain lost.”