Agreed. Afghanistan is one of the few things at this point that pretty much everyone in the US agrees about: the need to get out. The bad optics will be forgott

Agreed. Afghanistan is one of the few things at this point that pretty much everyone in the US agrees about: the need to get out. The bad optics will be forgotten in a month or so if not less. COVID, on the other hand is apocalyptic in the original greek sense of the word (revealing something that was hidden under the surface): It's revealed huge problems in the US not the least of which is an epistemic gap that seems unbridgeable.