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Why should the President consider Amtrak vital to National Security?
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In 1919 a junior officer named Eisenhower led an Army convoy from Annapolis Md. to San Francisco. It took 3 months. Eisenhower learned highways are vital to national defense. <br /> <br />Meanwhile in Germany, ex-corporal Hitler was fuming that the Army in WWI couldn’t maneuver any distance from the railroads because they could only be supplied by train. <br /> <br />The Autobahn and the Interstate were intended to transform military logistics. <br /> <br />Today, only the Army’s 2 airborne divisions can deploy quickly, the 8 heavier divisions need months to deploy. <br /> <br />In the cold war when NATO war gamed against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe we lost because we couldn’t resupply our troops. After the cold war our military was sized to fight two wars at once but we could never really do this because airlift didn’t have the capacity for one war. In both Iraq wars the 5 month build up of forces was needed because of the slow speed and limited sea lift capacity. <br /> <br />The military doesn’t have the logistics to fight preemptive war and war against mobile terrorists organizations. But I don’t think the scenarios so far; troop trains, grounded civil aviation, gridlocked Interstates make the case that Amtrak is the answer.
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