Michael Moore's new book, Will They Ever Trust Us Again? Letters from the War Zone is easily the most valuable work he has written. While his other books, such as Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country, have no doubt helped create the current climate in which George W. Bush is one of the most hated presidents of recent memory, they have always suffered from the problems inherent in Michael Moore's writing, namely ranting and petty name calling. All of that is gone in Will They Ever Trust Us Again as Michael Moore contributes only a seven page introduction to the book, instead using his power and privilege to publish the letters of soldiers in Iraq and their families--a group from which we have heard terribly little.

The book is divided into four sections--letters from soldiers in Iraq, letters from soldiers around the world, letters from veterans of other wars, and letters from families of soldiers. The most valuable sections are without a doubt those from current active-duty soldiers and their families. Reading these letters creates a unique picture of the war on Iraq--rather than the media-created fantasy of soldiers unanimous in their support of the war and President Bush, the letters show a military plagued by low morale. The low morale exists for a variety of reasons, but the most cited reason in the letters is the fact that soldiers simply do not want to be in Iraq. In numerous letters, soldiers describe how they joined the military because they were poor and had no other way of making money, with many of them enlisting with explicit assurances that they would not be sent to Iraq. The socio-economic background of the soldiers provides the most easily discernable commonality between letters, but other frequent themes include the aforementioned lies by recruiters, the incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and their handling of the occupation of Iraq, a sense that they are pawns in a political game directed by the Bush administration, acknowledgement that private contractors for companies like Blackwater make more than most soldiers, and tales of being disciplined for having dissenting view points. Other important issues appear only once in the book--problems with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adjusting of casualty numbers to make them more palatable to people in the United States, and explanations of massive reconstruction fraud by contractors such as Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary).

Of course, the rightwing critics among us will probably see this book as a vehicle to promote Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, as it was published shortly before the release of the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD and contains numerous letters in which soldiers thank Moore for producing the movie. The letters from soldiers saying that they never thought about what Bush was doing when he sent them to war do get a little repetitive and contributes to the "cult of personality" that surrounds Moore, but given the way the corporate media covered the war, it is not surprising that many have not heard the information presented in Fahrenheit 9/11. Moreover, there is something inspiring about hearing of soldiers stationed in Baghdad circulating DVD bootlegs of Fahrenheit 9/11 and using it as a basis for discussion and building an analysis of the war. Finally, while rightwing critics were largely (and perhaps unduly) able to dismiss Fahrenheit 9/11 as a propaganda vehicle, it is considerably more difficult to do so with Will They Ever Trust Us Again as Moore relinquishes his role as the sometimes obtrusive editor and allows soldiers to speak for themselves. Moore no doubt selected letters that fit with his analysis, but the very fact that he allowed actual soldiers to lay out the critique is a distinct difference with the analysis often presented by his rightwing detractors.

The only serious flaw with Moore's book comes in its focus on the 2004 presidential election. At numerous points, both within Moore’s introduction and the letters selected for inclusion, the defeat of President Bush and the election of John Kerry is advocated as a solution to the current situation in Iraq. While the election of John Kerry may have been an improvement over President Bush in some areas, it would not have made a tangible difference when it came to the occupation of Iraq. Throughout the campaign Kerry pledged to keep troops in Iraq as long as it took to "defeat the terrorists" essentially arguing that he would occupy Iraq better than Bush. It should not come as a surprise that some of the soldiers would advocate the election of Kerry as a solution to the situation in Iraq, their access to media is much more limited and many of them only came to consciousness recently, but someone like Moore should know better. Rather than focus on the election, Moore should have encouraged people to vote, since it is a tactic that may institute some change with relatively little effort, but he also should have encouraged people to become involved in the antiwar movement. To his credit, Moore does encourage people to join "peace groups" in the introduction, but his information on how to do this is limited and his resources for supporting the troops fail to include the more activist oriented pro-troop movements. Nowhere does he explain the importance of building a movement outside of electoral politics that has the capacity to win victories regardless of who is office--a step that would bring the country towards truly progressive change.

Nevertheless, Will They Ever Trust Us Again is an important contribution to the public discourse on the war. The soldiers featured in the book give a far different account of the military than the corporate media, who have often portrayed a military in unanimous support of the war united against an anti-American antiwar movement. While not essential reading for everyone, those who want to hear the attitudes of antiwar soldiers in the US military should add Will They Ever Trust Us Again to their reading lists.