Iraq, the homefront, and Doonesbury

In the Doonesbury storyline that began on Monday, Garry Trudeau managed to capture what modern technology has done for deployed families far, far better than anyone I've seen before. With many of the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan operating from more-or-less permanent bases, communications between the front lines and those left at home are a hell of a lot better than they've ever been.

In many ways, this is a mixed blessing.

At the camp my wife is based out of in Iraq, she has easy access to a payphone and can buy phone cards that allow her to call home at reasonable rates. She should have high-speed internet access in her quarters shortly, too. She's signed up for the service, and is paying the vendor the monthly fee for access. All she has to do now is scrounge up the 50-100 feet of Cat 5 cable to get from the connection point to the container she's living in and that will be good to go.

Right now, my wife usually manages to call from Iraq most evenings around dinnertime. She has a chance to talk to the kids, to find out how their day was and how much homework they have. When they do good, she can praise them immediately, and when they've screwed up they can count on having her scold them from thousands of miles away not all that long after I've done it.

Of course, the things that she can actually do to help with those situations are kind of limited.

And then there's the worrying. Previous generations of spouses got to worry when the morning paper showed up, or when they saw a Western Union delivery boy coming down the street. These days, the situation outlined in the Doonesbury strip - where the spouse starts to worry when the soldier isn't back from patrol on time - is a reasonably accurate depiction of reality.

That's funny, in a way, I guess. Three or four wars ago, your commanding officer might not start to worry until you were 24 hours late getting back from patrol. Today, your spouse can start to worry when you're 24 minutes late getting in.

I guess that's progress.