Asking because I can think of a few countries America has been involved in wars with that are now super popular tourist destinations. Vietnam is one that comes to mind as a super popular country for backpackers traveling Southeast Asia, and South Korea seems to be doing really well attracting people due to popularity of their media. Japan is also another country that gets so much visitors. I never really thought of these places as areas once ravaged by war while I was there except for Hiroshima, the war memorial in Korea, and some war memorials in Hanoi when I visited so I imagine going to these countries now is probably a huge shock as to how different they make look nowadays.
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My grandfather fought in the Pacific in WWII. He lived into the 2000s, so long enough to see the total transformation of Japan. But he refused to visit the country, and I believe to his last days avoided buying Japanese products. I don’t know a lot of details about his experience in the war but I know he saw some terrible things (beaches soaked with blood and flesh) and that a close cousin was a POW of the Japanese.
My grandmother, however, did go to visit Japan some time in the ‘80s or ‘90s when a friend invited her. We have a picture of her somewhere wearing a kimono. My impression is that she still had almost a Mikado-esque impression of the Japanese as funny little foreign people, hard for the western mind to comprehend.
Both of these grandparents were people of few words, so I don’t know how my grandfather felt about his wife flying off to a country he pretty clearly still hated and could not forgive. I wonder.
My grandfather was captain of a b17 in europe and went back to germany. He loved it had nothing but good things to say about it. Same with italy.
I haven’t heard if the Taliban is granting tourist visas so for me it’s a no.
I can’t say about visiting but I had a friend whose father was in special forces in Vietnam. He came to visit us and we had dinner with a grad student whose parents fought the US and whose father fought against the US in south Vietnam.
So my buddy and his veteran father were sitting having dinner with the son of a mother and father that fought Americans. I didn’t mention that the Vietnamese guys parents fought against the US and that his dad was in direct combat. I didn’t mention to my Vietnamese friend that my friend’s dad was a Vietnam vet that saw significant combat.
It was a lovely dinner but man, for me it was strange to just know the subtext when the other folks didn’t.