Will They Ever Trust Us Again? by Michael Moore Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Will They Ever Trust Us Again?
Book Review: Trust Buster!
Summary: 1 Stars
Did I oversleep?
Is there a Draft on or something?
You'd sure think so, to read through the raft of e-mail Michael Moore has collected, purportedly from American GIs serving in Iraq. Or even to glance at the cover of Moore's latest little bray from the barn: front-and-center Moore, Humpty Dumpty of the Left, holds a tiny American flag to the reader, as if in supplication.
Moore's face betrays some barely-suppressed emotion: ostensibly righteous scorn, perhaps chronic constipation, or the desire to go out on a midnight burger run.
The American flag looks tiny, and terrified. It has a right to be, reduced to the miniscule in Moore's ogrish, fleshy, sweating palms, and God knows whether the Great Author is hungry for sacred national cloth or not. I wouldn't take any chances.
So let's dive into the guts of "Will They Ever Trust Us": it's a confection ideally suited for the rancorous palate of an Angry American Left. If that's you, you'll revel in it: it purports to be a collection of angry missives, electronic and tangible, from soldiers in Iraq.
According to Michael Moore: The boys are mad as Hell, and it has everything to do with trust. Or at least, that's the take from Michael Moore, the nation's only one-man pork barrel project. Let's talk a quick little jot about Michael Moore: he's a lot like MIT professor Noam Chomsky.
They have a lot in common, actually---both with each other and with the local homeless crackpot who spends tons of quality time talking to shoe lint in the gutter. They both seek desperately, furiously, to position themselves as the Great Wild Men of American arts & letters.
So if Noam Chomsky were to lose half his brain, 95% of his reason, and gain about 900 pounds, he's be Michael Moore! With that in mind:
1) There is no Draft. Our guys over there---and God bless every single one of them!---are paid volunteers. They're soldiers, paid to shoot people and blow things up. They are not paid to come back home and collect a hefty salary playing squash.
2) As Machiavelli might have said, to live in Peace you gotta prepare for War. War is the means by which a Nation defends itself from belligerents, and expands and protects its interests abroad.It is the duty of the military to serve those interests without question, and it is the duty of the President & Congress---and the people who elect the boys and girls on the Hill---to define what those interests might be.
3) The point of all this is: the President, and the Congress which voted to authorize war in Iraq, have no duty to explain the justice or rightness of the war to any of the guys on the ground. End of story. You're told to get you're a** and your squad up to the top of Hill 462 and damn the consequences, and you don't spend time scratching yourself and wondering if this whole campaign---Hell, the whole damned war---makes sense. You breathe a prayer to God and take a page from Nike's playbook, and Just Do It.
And that is exactly what our boys out in the Iraqi sands have been doing, day in, day out, for more than two years. 4) So at the end of the day, we're left with Moore's thesis: War is Hell, not so much because it always has been, but because Bush made it so.
Because, according to Moby Moore, because Bush lied about the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place. Look: because you get a few authentic missives from the Boys at the Front complaining, it doesn't mean they don't relish doing their duty.
Soldiers complain. It's a staple of warfare, a common denominator of soldiers throughout the ages. Xenophon's Ten Thousand probably bitched, hoplite to hoplite, about the crappy blood broth they had to drink; Prince Hal's "Happy Few" may have been Happy & Few, true, but they probably had a lot of nasty things to say about their rusty shields and armor when the Prince's royal back was turned.
But Moore takes complaining as proof of his thesis: that we gotta bring the Boys back home, now. That alone would be a failure of logic bordering on mental disability---never an issue for Moore---but then you've got a recurring theme among these "e-mail", where nameless GIs keep blaming Bush for "lying". Saying the war is wrong is one thing: creating straw men in army uniforms to do the talking for you is another thing entirely.
War isn't clean, concise, clear. It's messy. Wars are fought and won because of, and sometimes in spite of, huge errors of judgment.We need a little reality therapy, a little perspective: in World War II, to rid the world of Nazis and imperialist Japanese, we lost more than a quarter million of our brave young men.
Talk about the craziness of war! In the Big One, we had faulty---if incomptent---intelligence; failure of nerve; the duplicity of double agents at the very highest levels of government; clashing personalities, from FDR to Eisenhower to Patton. War is risk, reward, chaos; high triumph, soul-consuming defeat and disaster.
That's War.
The bad news: we're still, largely, a bunch of self-absorbed children .
In the final analysis, Moore isn't really interested in American soldiers: in "Will they ever Trust Us", they're polemical chesspieces, reduced to paper tigers, used to pummel and check the Bush administration. But in the end, the Republic will survive Moore, as will the dedicated, supremely well-trained, and bracingly deadly young warriors who serve the United States, and fight and die in our planet's hellholes to defend the free speech Moore enjoys---and squanders.
Semper Fi. JSG
Book Review: why are all the fat, white, political types dullards??
Summary: 1 Stars
Whether it is Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh or Michael "Less is" Moore, a common trend is becoming readily apparent in the politcal scene...fat, disgruntled, white men are making millions by turning American people against oursleves.
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As a young American, I implore all other young Americans to be wary of what these guys say. One hates Americans and the other "tries" too hard to be American. But remember, they both want money and this is the way they get it. Its time for the youth to wake up. Why do we let old, crusty conservatives and liberals rule our lives? Why do we listen to these fat bastards? Can't we see the damage that years of liberal-conservative rule has done to this country. We need change. Don't fall in the same pits that our parents fell in. WAKE UP! NOW!!!
Book Review: Let the weak minded sheep follow a man who hates life.
Summary: 1 Stars
More of the same from Michael (I despise the country that has made me a multi-millionaire) Moore. These supposed 1000's of emails came from a few unfortunate soldiers who either A. Joined the military for a paycheck and in no way did they ever want to serve their country or fight for the freedoms of innocents. or B. Have been bullied and brainwashed by liberal propaganda and strong armed into their views by filth like Michael (americans are disgusting idiots) Moore. These supposed 1000's of emailes are but the tiniest of blips on the radar screen of 100's of thousands of soldiers who are out there fighting in multiple countries, for our freedoms, and for the freedoms of innocents who have never had the luxuries we have all of our blessed lives. These soldiers won't forget 911. These soldiers won't forget the tears flowing, and the stories being told from victims of Saddams sadistic rule ....and the immense relief of these people knowing that they finally aren't ruled by fear. God Bless America. Those who don't like it ....Canada is awaiting you with open arms. Book Review: Calling all Michael Moore fans!
Summary: 1 Stars
Please go to Iraq, visit a victim of one of the recent terrorist bombings there and tell that person what good people the Iraqi insurgents are. Tell them that they are fighting for the freedom of Iraq and that their numbers will grow and they will win. Go ahead. Tell them!Book Review: A Collection Short Stories from the Troops
Summary: 4 Stars
One novel technique used by war authors, and it is used here by Moore, is to use letters from the soldiers written home as source material. These letters give some insights into the events on the ground as seen by the soldiers.
One of my favourite books is by the author Malcolm Brown. He wrote five or six books on WWI, one being the Imperial war Museum Book of the Western Front. In that particular book, he uses letters from the troops to describe the pointlessness of WWI and the death and fighting faced by the opposing forces at close range. Often he just published their letters with comments. In many cases the soldiers make negative comments about their leaders, especially the military leaders. Nobody would say Brown is a nut, he is considered to be a good writer.
Well we have a similar situation here but less graphic than the movie Saving Private Ryan or a Brown book. I have gone through this new Moore book and some of the ideas are similar to Brown and others from prior wars. But in the modern era we do not have to sift through the old letters sent home by the troops. Michael Moore has received what must be thousands of e-mails. Some of these come from the troops especially in Iraq. He has taken a hundred or so of the most interesting, and without much input or writing he has put together a 200 page book of e-mails mostly from the troops. Each one is a page or two long, but mostly he has selected those that are two pages. Each e-mail has the return e-mail address of the senders plus some other information. At the back he has a list of agencies that help the troops and others with relief work.
Technically speaking Moore is not writing the book, but rather he is gathering and editing these "short stories" as a coherent collection mostly written by the troops. So the views and stories are not those of Moore, per se, but rather he is a vehicle for wider distribution and publication. Of course many of the e-mails are in general sympathy with his anti-war views. They are dated from approximately March 2004 through to July 2004, and are mostly from active soldiers, or those who have recently returned home, or from parents.
So the book is interesting because it is a collection of views from people in the military and what they think of the conflict. Not just one or two complainers, but over 100 letters or mini-stories. There is neither a major editing or spin. It is just their views.
4 stars.