The photograph of the burned girl on that road in Vietnam symbolizes a war that had gone on far, far too long—and was still far from over. After all, Nixon ran on a platform in 1968 to end the war. And what did he do? He sabotaged L.B.J.’s back-channel peace talks and escalated the war—massively escalated it—by invading Cambodia. The picture becomes emblematic of so many things: the lies of politicians, the horrors of war, the uncertainty of outcomes. When we look at Kim Phúc, we ask ourselves, “What did she do to deserve this?” And the answer, invariably, comes back. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Kim Phúc spent a long time very mad about everything and everyone involved in this atrocity. If I were her, I would be mad, too. The fact that the burning of Kim Phúc occurred in the course of some supposedly meaningful mission—e.g., to save South Vietnam from Communism—I don’t think that changes much of anything. A little girl running from fire was engulfed by it and horribly, horribly damaged. I don’t even like the idea that one can take a positive lesson from such a thing.
Kim Phúc sees it differently. Near the end of her book, she mentions a revelation that turned the last of her rage on its head. Despite endless efforts to forgive everyone for everything done to her on June 8, 1972, “there was one question that tormented me above them all: Why did the people at the hospital put me in the morgue, leaving me to die?”
Speaking at a UNESCO conference 30 years later, she met a renowned scientist who had spent the majority of his career studying chemical weapons, including napalm. He explained to her: “The fact that you were left unattended for three days’ time, your wounds wrapped tightly in bandages, your body laid to rest, is precisely what saved your life.” It turns out that napalm can re-ignite. Kim Phúc later met the brother of an unfortunate soldier in Vietnam who found this out the hard way. After being burned with napalm, he was airlifted to a hospital in Hawaii. Within minutes of triage nurses removing his bandages to inspect his burns, he was dead.
I find this story deeply troubling, and I’m not even sure why. God, whoever He or She might be, is most likely not an expert on third-degree napalm burns. The fact that Kim Phúc’s bandages weren’t removed was yet another chance occurrence, just like the napalming of her village itself. Except one nearly cost her her life; the other saved it. It only heightens my feelings about the sad fate of humanity. We endlessly try to find meaning where there is none—only the impossible burden of having to bear the unbearable, comprehend the incomprehensible, forgive the unforgivable.