At what point does incompetence and headlong withdrawal become indistinguishable from surrender?

Who is on the run? The U.S. is withdrawing personnel from Libya, and temporarily closing twenty embassies. al Qaeda has busted loose hundreds of prisoners from prisons in Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan. I thought Obama told us that al Qaeda was on the run! Richard Fernandez writes,

After all, the evacuation of personnel and the closure of diplomatic missions are physical acts involving actual people being transported thousands of miles. They are actions in which real concrete and steel buildings are being shuttered, at least temporarily. At what point does incompetence and headlong withdrawal become indistinguishable from surrender?