War, the vacuum of trust

In the book, Ishmael writes, "This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other. Everyone who wasn't a friend was an enemy." Ishmael, the only thing that you got wrong, you specified civil war, all war does that to everyone. Many of my friends as well as 4 of my family members served as a military man in the Iraqi Freedom operation. All of them said that at first they could trust almost all of the civilians as it was easy to depict the terrorists from the civilians as they dressed in militia clothes. However after about 6 months of the war, and the insurgency finally realizing they would be much more effective at killing American soldiers by dressing up as civilians and concealing their weapons, trusting the locals instantly became a call for your own death if you were a soldier. Although the R.O.E.'s (Rules Of Engagement) stated you had to be fired on before you could fire on anyone, many US Soldiers would be on edge and threaten innocent civilians to secure their own safety, once this began, the mutual trust plummeted and most of the locals didn't trust the US Soldiers and most of the US Soldiers didn't trust most of the locals. When I moved from Souther California to the Metro-Detroit area, I experienced this in a way. It took me a REALLY REALLY LONG TIME to realize I could be myself without being afraid of everyone rejecting me. So I put up a facade, and as it felt as though more and more people were rejecting me and ever fewer people were actually accepting me. As I experienced that I started to shut down my social aspect, I went from trying to be out there to pulling myself inside a shell, and every person I met that wasn't a friend was automatically marked as enemy in my book. Now I've healed and exposed myself to the world, or at least more so, and I've stopped marking people as enemy. It can heal and will heal it just will take time.