You are right and I don't think it should be avoided. It's just that, a symbolic milestone of sorts. A cutoff date.

> Avoiding something [disbanding NASA] for such symbolic reasons [???] is negative cargo cult thinking.

Cargo-cult requires a rigid through-line.

What criteria would you use, to choose to avoid something in order to preemptively avoid hindsight analysis? It's a nonsensical line of thinking.