My countryfolk do often embarrass me: they're loud, obnoxious and oblivious. Of course, by local standards so am I, on occasion. I do my best.

More embarrassing is the fact that my countryfolk have started, fomented, funded and equipped wars in almost every country I visit. Sometimes they were little brushfire wars with CIA or renegade State Department involvement (c.f., all of Latin America, most of Africa, and most of Asia); sometimes full-blown conflagrations which enveloped and destroyed whole countries, as in Southeast Asia and more recently Iraq and Afghanistan.

For balance, I'd have to add that British, Australian, South African and other Commonwealth travelers have usually been the worst behaved--far worse than Americans or any of the other oft-complained-about nationalities. My first experience of this was a drinking contest--more accurately, a puking contest--in Malawi, but local variants throughout Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia have supported my initial prejudices. I once shared a train through the Ukraine with some British football fans who strained even my jaded credulity while totally appalling the local people--no saints themselves.

I've never known what to make of this, but then neither have I known what to make of my own country's warmongering. I like to imagine that travel cures, or at least lessens, such tendencies, but that might be my own innocence speaking.

Mark