Maine Army National Guard members are in a better position to manage their lives and careers now that the Defense Department has promised to give them longer notice before deployment, keep those deployments shorter and train for those deployments closer to home.

In the past, troops, their families and employers got short notice about when they would be shipped out. In 2004, the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion was notified only three months before they were to serve in Iraq, which Maj. Gen. John Libby says caused "a haphazard start to the war."

They also had to travel to other states for training. Year-long deployments in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, when combined with several months of training in other states, meant troops were away from home and family for as much as 16 months.

That was disruptive to troops, families and employers. Spouses and children found themselves scrambling to adjust to the rapid change in circumstances.

Employers had to find substitutes, if possible, for some of their hardest workers. Troops and families suffered from the long separations.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates began his job, he met with state adjutant generals to discuss issues raised by the growing reliance on National Guard troops to fight the war in Iraq. They told Gates they needed three things to be able to successfully recruit and retain soldiers: advance deployment notice, shorter deployments (a maximum of 12 months) and predictability.

Gates initiated the new policy, along with a host of other changes he's made to overhaul various aspects of U.S. military operations (including last week's forced resignations of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff).

The new National Guard policy hit the ground earlier this month in Maine when the 500 members of the 133rd Engineers were notified to expect deployment in 2010.

Legitimate arguments can and should be made that the war we are fighting in Iraq should never have been fought. But we are in this war deeply now, and we applaud any attempt, such as this one, to treat our troops more humanely and with more respect.