“The travel industry has almost fully rebounded from 9/11. Family tourism is up, and people seem more than willing to hop on planes and cross the globe. There are ‘fun’ holidays and ‘adventure’ holidays, honeymoons and Spring Break trips.” Or so my travel advisor tells me. But there are few political holidays, for politics and vacations are thought not to mix. Yet holidays are also about discovering unknown aspects of the world. And so it might behoove us to visit not only the great “sights” but also the great “sores”: from the cursed massacre sites of Africa and Central America to the poisoned shores of the Aral Sea and Scotland's “Anthrax Island.”
In this book, we will line up—not at museums and art galleries—but at more sinister political monuments, like the CIA-funded “Academy of Terror.” We will tread the no-man's lands of the various demilitarized zones, between North and South Korea, between Syria and Israel—even between Catholic and Protestant turf in Northern Ireland. We will go big game hunting like old-world imperialists in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Then we will become prey in the streets of Belfast and Baghdad. If time permits (for the world is large and there is much to see), we will visit the “killing fields” of Cambodia, or Australia—or even Madagascar? On this tour, the traveler must be forgiven for losing track of their location. For in truth, the post-colonial landscape is similar the world over, and the difference is just a matter of time zone.