"Napalm Girl": as iconic an image today, as it was 40 years ago

This iconic photo taken by Huynh Cong Ut during the Vietnam war and often referred to as "Napalm Girl" became 40 years old, just as that naked little girl who was 9 back then has recently turned 49 years old.  The scene took place near Trang Bang village after a napalm attack on suspected Vietcong hiding out in the area. The little girl, Kim Phuc, was traumatized not only by the serious burns she incurred on over 30 percent of her body (not evident in the photo), but also by her eventual "fame", and her being used by the new communist leaders as a propaganda weapon of their very own. She has said that she was both a victim of war, who then was forced to become another kind of victim. To cut a long story short, Kim Phuc is now a happily married mother of two, who lives in Toronto, Canada, having defected there during her honeymoon.

The Vietnam war was probably the most shocking and divisive war in America's history, and we certainly don't have the time and space here to get into it. My purpose in choosing this photo for today's blog is simply as a reminder of the real horrors of war. Too often we see movies that somehow romanticize the whole thing, and even make the indiscriminate killing of civilians, women and children perfectly understandable, if not actually legitimate. It's one thing to hear a George Bush spouting polemic about the need for this war or that one, and quite another to actually see evidence of what war truly means, in practice. Seemingly, some of those memories have faded, as indicated by recent and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weapons may have become more sophisticated, hitting of specific targets more possible, war apparently has become more "civilized", but nothing much has changed. You can be sure scenes like the one above have played out often in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the latter affair has now surpassed the Vietnam  war in duration. It seems incongruous that we didn't have Facebook and iPhones when that war was initiated, and social media were not even in diapers. 

As much as one may well prefer to forget the horrors of Vietnam, or the reality of Afghanistan and Iraq (the rocky and sandy versions of Vietnam, respectively), this photo is extremely sobering and serves to remind us civilians of what war really involves and consists of - maiming and killing of people. If a picture of a little girl called Kim Phuc can potentially do something positive, even 40 years later, then we need to show it and talk about it. - Kevin Mc