Kony 2012?

I was trying really hard to avoid talking about my views on this, but it was requested a few times by readers, and I did not want to disappoint. 

First, before you start reading, I don’t care how you spend your money. It is your money, not mine, and if you choose to support an organization, you should be able to do that. Secondly, I’m going to give away the ending, and say that I do not fully support, nor plan on supporting, the organization Invisible Children. I’ll elaborate more on that later. Oh, and as per usual, all opinions are my own.

If you haven’t seen already, there is one video that is blowing up the internet, entitled Kony 2012, which was made by an organization called Invisible Children. The video is about half an hour long, and talks about a Ugandan warlord named Joseph Kony. Kony abducts children from their homes and makes them into his personal army, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). If they’re boy children, they become child soldiers, and the girls become wives for his soldiers. They’re forced to kill and pillage sections of Africa, in a way that no child should. The premise behind his personal brand of insanity is allegedly that he wants to impose the Ten Commandments on the people of Africa (I guess that ‘thou shalt not kill’ thing doesn’t count though). What I found interesting about this is that on the news, the religious extremist terrorist groups are usually Middle Eastern Islamic people. They’re very rarely Christian. Here’s an example of some crazy Christians. You can blame that on the media or what have you, but it’s true.

This man is Joseph Kony.

 The plan of Invisible Children is to make Kony a household name. They want you to know who he is, and to petition the government, as well as media figures, to send aid to Uganda to stop him and his army. The plan is to spread the video and alert higher authorities that you’re aware of this problem, and they should be too. On April 20^th, there is a worldwide rally in whatever your town is, to cover the city with posters and bring everyone together to raise awareness. To simultaneously raise funds for their organization, they sell the posters for a few bucks each. I suppose you could get around this by printing out your own, but that does disrupt their cash flow for sure.

Invisible Children

 Almost as soon as the video was up, there started to be some skeptical criticisms made of Invisible Children. I’m going to admit, as I did above, that I am one of the skeptics. I agree that Joseph Kony and the LRA need to be stopped. What they are doing is wrong, and a perversion of beliefs that has to be eliminated. I also like that the primary objective is to have Kony tried for crimes against humanity in theHague. I love justice when it’s done through fair trial. Just killing him is not something that I like. At the same time, I have a few concerns with Invisible Children’s general plans of figuring this stuff out.

In the video, the idea of sending in American military forces is brought up as a solution. I don’t like this idea. The guys who run Invisible Children, although their intenetions are surely honorable, aren’t really experts in taking down military leaders. I think their plan of raising awareness is great, and getting world leaders to promise action is great too, but that beyond that, they should leave the strategizing to those that do it best.  As well, when (if) the military of any country finds Kony, he’s going to be surrounded by soldiers. Some of these soldiers are children, if you recall, and although they are ‘soldiers’ they’re still kids, and I think that the forces will have trouble capturing him, while allowing the kids around him to be unharmed. Just as a sort of addendum, if the LRA starts spreading into other countries, it does require inter-governmental cooperation. The US ran into a lot of problems with this when they went in and removed Osama bin Laden, and it’s possible that further problems could arise, and also hinder the mission.

The video is also a little misleading. Kony currently is completely out of Uganda. He was chased out years ago. Yes, he’s still in the Congo and other territories, but Uganda is pretty much completely out of the picture now, except for the Uganda people still in Kony’s command. The video is a little misleading about that fact. Their website is equally misleading.  Yesterday, IC released a statement in regards to this, where they said that although they were misleading about him still being in Uganda, a large portion of their budget goes towards rehabilitation of communities affected by Kony. I don’t understand why they didn’t say something like that in the first place. It seems like they're trying to take on a lot, both arresting this man, and rebuilding the communities, without very definite organization. A good analogy that I found a few blogs was that someone shows you footage of Hurricane Katrina ravaging New Orleans today, even though it happened in 2005. You see this video, and you want to fly straight there and help right now, you don't have any training, but you feel like you can help. You get there, and it’s New Orleans. They just finished Mardi Gras, and although parts of the city are still not the same, it is rebuilding, thanks to the help of experts with a plan. I had some close friends who were in rural Uganda a couple months ago, and they said that many people live in poverty, but it is because of poor governmental management, which the video and website also do not address. Essentially, I don’t like being misled, however well-intentioned it may be. Several watchgroups that are keeping tabs on Kony have said that his overall manpower has diminished from 100,000 people to more like 8-10,000, and that they're literally starving to death in the forest. The IC didn't really address this. In fact, the entire video simplifies a very complex situation.

I’m usually against awareness for the sake of awareness, but this is one of those cases when being more aware of this issue is important. I had no idea about this until two days ago, and I think it’s important that it gets taken care of. While I do support IC’s general ‘Make Kony Famous’ plan, their execution needs a little work. I think the actual plan-making should be left to the professionals. Before you jump down my throat, I’m sure that the founders of IC have done a lot of research, but they can’t adequately weigh the pros and cons objectively, which is a problem. It’s good to have passionate people, but you need someone who is purely rational to think out the course of action.

I suppose the take home message is that critical thinking is important. Everyone (at least my facebook friends) saw the video, and got really fired up. Everyone was so passionate about this, and angry that further action hadn’t been taken. Few of them really stopped to think about the whole story. I believe, personally, that in a society that values personal freedom, you should be able to form personal opinions. All that I ask is when forming an opinion think it through. It’s easy to watch a little movie on youtube and get excited about something, but that doesn’t mean that you really understand.

So think about it, do research. I don’t think that the video should be the end of your knowledge. I think you should do your own research before you form an opinion. 

So as requested, that was my take on the Kony 2012 thing. I’m all for being informed about the world, and I hope you are too. Below is the video that started it all, in case you haven't seen it. Also, here's a National Post article with some criticisms. You can also see the Invisible Children website here. As always, I’d love to hear from you.