I believe that it is essential to our leadership in the world and to the development of true democracy in our country to have no discrimination in our country whatsoever. This is most important in the schools of our country.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Being 'Over There' in the internet era

Technology helps.  For anybody seeking comfort or convenience under circumstances in which either is rather scarce, technology is great.  Soldiers who are participating in the U.S. war in Iraq enjoy entertainment and communication capabilities inside the combat zone that are truly unprecedented.  For example, the unit I was stationed with in Tikrit had a Communications and Equipment (C&E) shop that was tasked with something along the lines of  repairing radar equipment and high-tech surveillance tools.  Quite honestly, I had no idea what they did; I just knew the C&E shop as the place where a person went to get an XBox fixed.

That’s right, there was XBox.  And Playstation.  And laptop computers, and mini-refrigerators, and portable DVD players, and anything else that can move through the mail.  I remember the XBox in particular because I was on door guard at the Post Exchange (PX) on a day when a new shipment of XBoxes and TVs came in, and it seemed like everybody on base came to buy one.  (By the way, a PX is a small-scale store where soldiers can buy things like food, CDs, socks, toiletries and such.  Yep.  We had a PX too—it was right next to the Subway trailer). 

More important than any access to means of entertainment was the generally reliable and adequately available communication technology like phone banks and internet centers.   Standing in line to use the phone was often a long wait, and the hours were often kind of crappy because of time differences, and on some bases, the internet was a costly per-minute service.  However, it was not extremely difficult for soldiers to get ahold of loved ones by phone, email, IM, or video link.  The value of this communication truly cannot be overstated, as the idea of returning home is the single greatest motivation and consolation for any soldier separated from the affection and goodwill of friends and families.  The concept of home is best maintained through regular contact with the people who make home something worth longing for.

The ubiquitous power generators in Iraq and Kuwait have made most electronic functions for American soldiers in the Iraq War very accessible.  I remember a particular day when some folks in my unit were lamenting that the dining facility had run out of Baskin Robbins ice cream, and I could only comment that “inconsistent supply of top-quality desserts is simply one of the sacrifices we have to make during a time of war.”  In moments such as those I always wanted to see the reaction of a time-traveling soldier from the Iwo Jima campaign or something.  I imagined that they would stand there in awe thinking, “wait, this is a war zone?  This doesn’t look so bad to me.  Shoot, in my time we didn’t have it this good back home…”  And then I picture a bunch of mortars or rockets falling in, and that’s when it seems this war isn’t so much better after all.

As much as advances in technology have made conditions more comfortable and connections to home easier than in past American wars, those same advances have made weapons easier to develop and manufacture, cheaper, simpler, easier to conceal, and more devastatingly lethal.  Some of the technologies placing soldiers at risk in the current war zone, such as remotely detonated roadside bombs or shoulder-mounted rockets, existed during previous wars, but what is distinctive about today is that these weapons are extraordinarily cheap and available to people without access to the funding of a traditional national army.  As a result, soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, for all of their air conditioning and iPods and so forth, face more diverse potential enemies with greater destructive power than has ever been the case before.  Technological innovation works both ways.

In my opinion, the technological luxuries enjoyed by many modern U.S. soldiers in a combat zone are best thought of as the anesthesia administered to a patient undergoing major heart surgery.  Just as the anesthesia allows the terrifying, potentially fatal, deeply traumatic experience to pass with less consciousness of it, so too can access to an internet connection or a live-camera link back home make a war pass with less notice.  But the pacification is all that is achieved.   The threat — and therefore the stress and pressure — remain very real.  

For this reason, people keeping in touch with soldiers who are overseas should continue to regard phone or email contact as indeed very special — even if it seems like access to such communication is regular and reliable.  When I was in Iraq, I may have called my grandmother more times than I have any other year and I may have called some of my friends only a little less than I did under normal situations.  However, the fact remains that each of those phone calls was potentially a final phone call as it was a rare day that passed without an explosion within our perimeter.  Too often it seems that people at home treat this communication very casually because the frequency or tone has changed little, but people need to remember that the context and the importance have changed a great deal.  (More specifically, saying to a deployed soldier, “Can you call back another time?  I’m using daytime cell phone minutes” is not okay).

It is only fair to emphasize at this point that not all deployed soldiers experience the same conditions; while the experience that informs my viewpoint can hardly be considered uncommon, there is no typical combat deployment.  Some bases and camps in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have nearly the level of power generators or electrical networking or communications as I’ve described here.  The unit I was with needed to send a smaller unit to another outpost in order to build a bigger detention facility and those soldiers were always happy to get back to our base Tikrit so that they could shower and use the phones. 
Beyond the locations that can limit entertainment or communication or comfort, some units have so many duties to fulfill, that the workload alone precludes use of whatever technology might be available.  

It is important to remember whenever hearing reports from the war in Iraq, that all analysis is deeply idiosyncratic.  From where I sit, technological advances had a decidedly positive influence on my combat deployment; but I never got hit by a bomb that was detonated with a cell phone call from forty miles away.  It’s great that we use technology for greater comfort under difficult circumstances; I just wish we didn’t also use it to find better ways to kill one another.

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