Why was Benghazi left unguarded?

But the key question is why this mission, in a nation that was clearly fragmenting into tribal groups, many heavily armed, and some violently jihadist, was not more heavily fortified or guarded in the first place. When the government places its people in harms way, it would seem to have a sworn duty to make certain a minimum degree of protection is available, especially to those unable to defend themselves. The State Department’s own probe has suggested that more needs to be done in this direction. But the department still lacks an Inspector General to monitor any such initiative, the last such officer having left without a replacement nearly five and a half years ago.

Certainly most American facilities around the world are well fortified. Back in August 1975, I watched as Japanese Red Army terrorists invaded the U.S. embassy in the peaceful Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Barely defended, let alone fortified, the embassy occupied four floors in a simple downtown office building. Amazingly, no one was harmed, more than 50 hostages released after several tense days, and the terrorists flew off into exile in Libya. Over the next decades, as American missions came increasingly into the cross-hairs of terrorists, such thinly-guarded facilities disappeared, diplomats retreating into what today, in most regions, are effectively fortified bunkers.