I grew up in a hayday of tourism for Americanos. As a then-resident of Rome, I saw tourists more from outside the bus, as one of the urchins playing on Trevi Fountain. Got pix? I'd sometimes go there with my friends from near Trastevere, after school or on weekends.
My sister claims we tried taking the money at one point (tourists throw coins) and got in trouble -- however I have no recollection of that and don't think we ever did. I had plenty of lira for Mars bars and bus fare. Rome has a fantastic bus system.
If It's Tuesday It Must Be Belgium typified the American Express debt card whirlwind so many Americans would go on. They'd shoot oodles of pictures and go home to share slideshows. Kodak was King. The Japanese middle class couldn't wait to get on board, joining our world of fat families with diabetes.
Then comes another form of "touring" as in "tour of duty". These personnel arrive in camo, live on bases, and tend to expect obedience from the locals, who are in some sense under their authority and jurisdiction. Those who take orders for a living like to be obeyed when it's their turn to command respect. Sexaholics have a field day if lucky, the whole point for some adventure-seekers.
When tourism gives way to tour of dutyism, as happened in Afghanistan (we went through as tourists, from Peshawar to Kabul on a local bus, out on Aeroflot to Tashkent), the locals get to stirring up trouble, triggering a need for "special forces" and so, another "dirty war" begins.
The Pentagon encounters insurgencies no matter where it tries to invade, including in Lower48. Many vets swarm to the police stations, and meet many of the same characters who refuse to do their bidding. "What's wrong with these people?" who came to the New World to escape all types of establishment-arianism, most especially the authoritarian type (tyranny).
One wishes one could turn back the clock, to those confidant days in the 1960s, with Americans offering a freshly optimistic face to the world, after decades of gruesome wartime and some far out futurama ala Montreal 67.
The American Express generation wanted to "buy the world a coke" and celebrate its freedom and autonomy, vs-a-vis those poor oppressed communists. But then the Empire stumbled, electively entering various quagmires, to prove itself worthy of the Imperial mantle, starting with war in the Philippines and continuing through the Korean and Vietnamese Peninsulas.
If freedom-loving Americans had really wanted to assert their values and have the world be safe for their kind, then more tourism is what was indicated.
Putting more boots on the ground is a way to self alienate and self weaken. That's called putting the wrong foot forward or waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Americans don't lust for empire the way some generals imagine they must. Their recalcitrance has more to do with their cognitive powers than with any inherent cowardice or unimaginative view of their destiny.
Americans need to train their young to enjoy the challenge of rugged travel, as work-study students and faculty on a spherical global campus, dotted with superfund sites and other mementos of man's folly. A major role, a calling for many, is that of cleanup or sanitation engineer. Undoing the damage of previous generations has gotten to be a priority undertaking.
A janitorial and/or care-taking role is nothing to sneer at. Course catalogs that offer no such relevant coursework are maybe fair game however, as targets of mockery.
