Consider how the morale of the Taliban has been lifted by such announcements; and how (they will tell themselves), if they just stick it out for few more months or years, the country will be theirs once again, but with the added prestige of beating the infidel West as the icing on the cake.
What, in effect, President Obama's announcement of his intention of starting troop withdrawals from next year means, is that every allied soldier killed between now and then will have truly died for nothing except to meet the requirements of a politician's electoral calender.
To camouflage any withdrawal as well as our disgrace, we are being promised by our leaders that the mentoring of an Afghanistan army will have progressed to such a state that when we leave, the newly trained Afghan army will be able to succeed where we failed, and defeat the Taliban.
No Western politician finds this scenario remotely plausible, but are all so desperate for the problem of Afghanistan to go away. Their public rhetoric is indeed Winstonian and will remain so right up to our retreat. But in private they are desperate to find a way out that they can sell; if not as a victory, then as some kind of success.
It is not the first time that the ordinary soldier will have been used by politicians - all you have to do is read your Kipling. But this time we are not fighting a colonial war where we have to hold on to the territories we grabbed for the sake of Empire. We are in Afghanistan because the country represents the most important of many fronts against extreme Islam. The other fronts comprise Israel as well as parts of those Islamic communities living amongst us in the UK as well as the rest of Europe.
If you think the latter front is in anyway a racist observation, then ask why Turkey is still waiting to join the European Community? Indeed, Turkey has recently shown a desire to join the Islamic main stream through frustration at Europe's ambivalence to her membership. She knows where she is not wanted and so once more seeks to play her historical role at Islam's centre in the modern world.
The West is experiencing the worst economic crisis in modern history, and under such an avalanche of needed sacrifice, it is natural that the economy rises to the top of our politician's agenda - if only (once again) for electoral purposes. But to wish away the most immediately threatening ideological problem since communism, in order to concentrate upon an economic one that can be managed internally, is like comparing bowls with cricket.
It is my fear that if we fabricate what we will try to sell as a 'withdrawal' rather than a retreat from Afghanistan, the Islamic world will quite naturally and rightly seek their advantage.
What this may mean is that those Islamic countries who now support the West will be tested with threats from their own people. Thus we may see Egypt as well as Jordan, to name but two Western friendly Arab nations being threatened by Islamic fundamentalism.
The whole Islamic world will change if we fail in Afghanistan. To the Islamic world any withdrawal, under any terms, that leads to the retreat of Western forces from Afghanistan, will make it seem possible for their ambition to conquer the West a reality
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