The Container Security Initiative: Pushing out the Front Lines in the War on Terrorism

Originally published February, 2004

Reprinted with permission from Marine Digest and Transportation News

The war on terrorism is just that: a war in every sense but the most traditional. Foreign invaders are trying to besiege and conquer us, to take what's rightfully ours, to attack us right here in our homeland. We want to keep them out. To do so, we are designing and putting up barricades, technological fortifications to defend ourselves.

But just as concrete bulwarks supported by cannon can be breached, allowing invaders immediate entry into protected territory, so can instruments of terror defy defensive measures installed at U.S. ports. Once that's happened, the repercussions might be as destructive as were those when the British broke our lines at Bladensburg, and burned Washington in 1814.