Critical Review from Guesthouse to Guantanamo Bay: Global Tourism and the Case of David Hicks

(Sung to Latin Rhythms) much tourist marketing. This is particularly the I’m going to take me a little holiday, case in the promotion of war as the paradigmatic Somewhere nice and quiet and secluded to get tourist experience. Visits to European battlefields, away, Turkish coves, Vietnamese underground tunnel I know my holiday will never be complete systems, jungle trails in Papua New Guinea, and Until I am trapped in my room with a bag on my head and my hands cuffed to my feet. countless memorials, graveyards, dawn services, and weapon’s museums represent a key aspect of I don’t like the Solomon Islands or Bermuda, the contemporary tourist industry. New configuraI don’t go in for car bombs on the beaches of Kuta, tions on this theme have recently emerged for the I don’t dig Jamacia or Aruba, intrepid traveler. To experience war as an historiMy idea of paradise is a naval base in Cuba, cal event, as tourists have done throughout the last Whooa! century, was a remarkably safe leisure pursuit. Take me, Oh take me away, This “temporal security” has been jeopardized, Ask me questions 24 hours a day, however, by “a new brand of political tourism You can drag me behind your jeep, called ‘war-zone hopping’” (Lisle, 2000, p. 97). InSet fire to me in my sleep Guantanamo, Guantanamo Bay creasingly dangerous destinations are viewed by (Eddie Perfect, Guantanamo Bay, Angry Eddie the adventure tourist as the next great frontier. CD, Melbourne, 2004) From Kosovo during the Balkan crisis to Afghanistan today, war zone tourism promises a realism and exhilaration that far surpasses the “staged auThe practices of modern tourism are notoriously paradoxical. Nowhere is this more evident thenticity” (MacCannell, 1989) of battlefield reenactments. Yet, blurring the distinction between than in the balancing of safety and danger in tourist adventure. The complex opposition between tourism and war, in a world preoccupied with rigid definitions of global security, can take people to regulated encounters with danger and the desire for a safe, but “not too safe” experience underpins places no guidebook will help them navigate.