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And we may, in fact, being making a classic military mistake

Somebody needs to yell at the editor for that one and a couple more little grammatical errors in the article. That's all it ever takes to discredit a reasonable article and make the writer seem an amateur.

I found the article to be interesting though. Particularly when thinking about the embassies world wide. Do you ever stop to think just how much our embassy buildings themselves are "ambassadors" in the world? Foreigners are looking at a little piece of America when they take a gander at our embassy.

Certainly, we can make them impregnable. But then the message the fellow on the street gets is not of an "open and free" society but one that must go to such elaborate measures to protect itself- a sort of self imposed restrictiveness. We could put the embassies underground- completely sheltering them from attack from the open street- the message there of America not being strong but in hiding.

Our embassies must be very cleverly thought out. They must combine expressing our values of freedom and freedom of individual movement (among others) while portraying our strength as well. They must inspire but also instill awe at our power. And they must still fit into the city in which they reside. Tricky bit of engineering but a worthwhile one I believe.

It might be an expensive endeavor but the gov't might look into completely relocating our embassies in every nation. And not just relocating to another existing building but rather have a structure built by an American architect. The buildings' facades could be designed to blend in with existing architecture but the core structures of the buildings would be designed specifically to counter all manner of attacks. They would have to sit on an appropriately large enough plot of land to allow for plenty of underground building and expansion, helicopter takeoffs/landings and also to allow for a proper ground defense to be implemented in case of attack. Corners of the building angled so that key marksmen from inside can protect large swathes of the property, lots of open kill zone, hedges built over concrete blast baffles- this sort of thing.

It is an interesting project to think about- even if only for your own personal imagination. Modern day castles if you will.

Very interesting idea, and it might be advisable, even practical to build new embassies, but not in all cases. With most US embassies in western countries, the embassy has a symbolic location, usually very close to that countries' capital building.

For example, the US embassy in Ottawa is the closest embassy to Parliament Hill and always will be. No other country would be permitted to locate their embassy closer. By the same token the Canadian embassy in the US is the only Embassy located between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, and if I'm not mistaken, the only one on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It's good that we're such close friends considering that this weekend is the anniversary of Canadians burning down the White House in retalliation for the American burning of the Parliament of Upper Canada at York (now Toronto) during the War of 1812.