KONY Fever

I just recently watched the KONY 2012 video, and here are my thoughts on it. I commend Russell on bringing attention to what is a horrible humanitarian situation in Uganda that has been ongoing for decades. It's great to see mass support for humanitarian causes, but I do implore the masses to not simply jump on a crusading bandwagon in a blind push for justice. This video completely simplifies the situation in Uganda, which is actually not limited to Uganda at all, but stretches into the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

It's very easy to say simply this man should be brought to justice, as he absolutely should. It's not easy to make it happen. Kony is protected by an army that has been estimated to be in the thousands, and is well entrenched in jungle it has called home for years. Since Kony has declared the only way he will surrender is if he is granted amnesty, it is clear that only a military operation can bring him into a court room. From what I can see from his video, Russell's knowledge of the required military operations to capture Kony is rudimentary. I will not claim to be an expert on African politics or history, but I do know that any conflict fought in Africa is bloody; civilian death tolls are always high and humanitarian violations common. Viewers of the video must understand that bringing Kony to justice will be a bloody battle.

I'm going to adopt a cynical view and say that I can't really take Obama's deployment of advisors to Uganda as a serious commitment to bringing Kony to justice. It's clear that the American Administration does not want to be directly involved in military operations. The one hundred soldiers is really a fraction of the military aid given to Colombia to supposedly fight narcotics traffickers, which has amounted to $8 billion over ten years. If a US Special Operations Group were deployed to Uganda in a direct combat role, I'm confident they would be able to hunt down Kony.

I believe the picture of the twelve US Administration Officials in the video is incredibly ironic and sheds some light on the US Government's response. Two of the officials in the video were very hostile towards the International Criminal Court during their period in office, and those officials are George Bush and Condoleeza Rice. The US has repeatedly rejected ICC rulings about war crimes conducted by the US in Nicaragua. By the laws of the UN Charter and Geneva Convention, George Bush himself is a war criminal. It is clear that if the US gets into the business of hunting down war criminals, they set the standard to bring to light every war crime committed, which could open members of the former Administration to criminal charges, something that former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned Bush about. My view is that Russell and his organization should recognize that dealing with war criminals for the prosecution of a war criminal is both irresponsible and hypocritical.

And the wrap it up, we must not forget that there are many human rights violations and people who perpetrate them all over Africa (Sudanese militias, Interahamwe), and if people are going to commit to one aspect of a cause, they had better be willing commit to the big picture.