'Napalm Girl' at 50: The story of the Vietnam War's defining photo / “Because Our Fathers Lied”: Craig McNamara Reveals the Lies of His Father, Robert McNamara

By Dilip -

The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects' faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. Soldiers from the South Vietnamese army's 25th Division follow helplessly behind. Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives. Though officially titled "The Terror of War," the photo is better known by the nickname given to the badly burned, naked 9-year-old at its center: "Napalm Girl".

The girl, since identified as Phan Thi Kim Phuc, ultimately survived her injuries. This was thanks, in part, to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who assisted the children after taking his now-iconic image. Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair are still in regular contact -- and using their story to spread a message of peace. "I will never forget that moment," Phuc said in a video call from Toronto, where she is now based….

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/napalm-girl-50-snap/index.html


The search for new time - Ahimsa in an age of permanent war


Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism


'Because Our Fathers Lied': Craig McNamara Reveals the Truth Behind the Lies of His Father, Robert McNamara

Thousands of words have been penned about Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, including by McNamara in his 1996 autobiography, “In Retrospect.” But the latest book about one of the architects of America’s disastrous Vietnam War policy, written by his son Craig McNamara, could be the most intimate look yet at his life and decisions. Although they carry the same last name, the two men seem to be radically different in almost every sense, especially when it comes to their perspectives on war and peace. McNamara joins Robert Scheer on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss his moving, eye-opening memoir, “Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today.”

The author describes how the book was years in the making and allowed him to explore the deep differences between himself, an anti-war demonstrator and Northern California walnut farmer, and his father, whose role in the Vietnam War and other Cold War operations and conflicts have led many, including Scheer, to call him a war criminal. McNamara describes in detail a father-son relationship that reflects some of the most profound rifts between two generations who saw the world in starkly distinct ways, while at the same time revealing agonizing truths about America his father helped to shape. The title, borrowed from a Rudyard Kipling poem, speaks to multi-generational encounters father and son had with Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp and his son, where the two Vietnamese men told their American counterparts that the U.S. never understood their country nor what they and their compatriots call Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (“Resistance war against the United States.”)....

https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/17/craig-mcnamara-reveals-the-truth-behind-the-lies-of-his-father-robert-mcnamara/


JAMES SPRINGER: Remembering the Fall of Saigon, 45 years on


An era passes: legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap Dies at 102


Waging Peace: Vietnam's anti-war exhibition brings GIs and Viet Cong together


Rarely-seen photos tell the story of America's Black Civil War soldiers


Evelyn Theiss - The Photos That Caused Americans To Ask ‘What Are We Doing In Vietnam?’ The My Lai Massacre 50 years later


Remembering the Fall of Saigon, 45 years on


Pentagon Papers and time when media was trusted


The whole world is watching. How the 1968 Chicago 'police riot' shocked America. By David Taylor and Sam Morris


Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94 // Catonsville 9 Statement written by Dan Berrigan, S.J.


Robert Fisk: Sinister efforts to minimise Japanese war crimes


Unit 731 Museum Harbin, China: the Japanese Army's site for "medical experimentation" on prisoners of war


Book review: The origins of Christianity - An atheist’s guide


W.E.B. du Bois: Returning Soldiers (1919)


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