Kony 2012Follow

Pretty much everyone who knows of Joseph Kony knows he's a dick and that the world would be a better place without him (well, Limbaugh disagrees, but meh, that's him). But the problem, historically, has been a lack of awareness about his Lord's Resistance Army and how it was created by kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers through the use of drugs, intimidation, and brainwashing. Kony 2012 is an almost 30-minute documentary about one of the "rescued" child-soldiers. It's become an overnight viral hit, amassing millions of views and shares in a couple of days. The documentary was shot by Invisible Children, a charity whose purpose is:
1. To raise awareness about the LRA and its activities.
2. To gain support for the capture and trial of Joseph Kony
3. To help the recovery of the areas affected by the LRA in Africa

Of course, as soon as the documentary came out, a ton of criticism came with it. The most common I've seen:
1. The numbers are supposedly misrepresented; for example, the 30,000 children kidnapped and press-ganged into the LRA are over the course of 30 years, not recently (although my co-worker, from Uganda, tells me that the LRA still does night-raids into the country to grab children). The number of LRA members still active today is likely in the low thousands, if not hundreds.
2. The LRA (and likely Kony) have not been in Uganda since 2006. IC openly admits this, but as their efforts for arrest mostly involve the Ugandan government and army, they've taken a lot of flak. Also, the Ugandan army and government commit a ton of abuses anyway, which IC decries, but still claims it's necessary to have local help to get the man arrested.
3. Some critics claim that IC is calling for US military intervention (although I couldn't find this on their website), which obviously isn't thrilling to a country tired of foreign wars. Obama sent 100 military personnel over in October to help in the hunt for Kony, but no luck yet.
4. Ugandan bloggers and activists claim this is racist; that it seems like "the white man's burden" to come help the "poor Africans," and that IC has boiled down a complex ethnic conflict to "Joseph Kony = bad. Get him and ignore the rest of the situation!"

I've seen other criticism that's more of the conspiracy right-wing side, the most prevalent being "Obama is heading this as an effort to distract from the election; he's only going after the LRA because they're purported Christians!"

Anyone else seen the documentary or have experience with the situation? Obviously it's nothing new; the conflict's gone on for the better part of three decades, and the LRA is, by most reports, weaker now than ever. Since 2006 Kony's been on the run. What do you think: do-gooders trying to rid the world of evil, or an activist group trying to capitalize and raise its income while chasing a windmill that's practically blown itself over?



Edited, Mar 8th 2012 10:54pm by LockeColeMA

So I could post that again.

It's not a video about Kony, it's a video about the power of social media. I mean, it's about both, but the latter is the main reason for its success.

Uganda's a mess. This is not news.

Only experience with Uganda I have is with gate guards. Nice people that don't seem to believe in showers.

Good thing I don't give a **** about anything then, or I'd be forced to go to random places and force my way of life on people who haven't asked for it.

Kids these days. Tsk tsk. Can't even summon the motivation to bribe their way to victory in an election, murder their opposition, wear a bunch of fake medals, have a harem of underage slave brides, steal foreign aid, and commit genocide.

They all just want to sit on the couch all day playin' their Nintendos and talkin' on their Myspaces.

Sure you weren't playing Shogun?.

Why does it have to be one or the other? The world is full of bad guys doing bad things fighting with other guys doing similarly bad things. It's also full of bad causes piggybacking on good causes. Oversimplifying things into a "bad vs good" context is usually not only not accurate, but likely to result in a hell of a lot of unintentional side effects.

Ok!

I think that Kony is a "really bad guy"(tm). And all the other really bad guys in the area point to him and say "go after him, cause he's really bad! Oh... And give us some money and guns to help us fight this really bad guy". Then, if historical patterns hold true, when the guys we've helped fight Kony start doing really bad things (which really means that our media actually notices and reports this to the public), suddenly we'll have to withdraw our support for the "new really bad guys" we've been helping out. Then, they'll be all "why aren't you helping us anymore?!". Then, since their badness has become the latest shiny-whirly thing, sanctions and whatnot will follow. And they'll be like "WTF?!". And then someone will inevitably post pictures of Obama shaking hands with these new really bad guys and use it to argue that the US is really responsible for all the really bad stuff going on around there anyway. Cause look at our president all friendly with them and whatnot!


Kinda doesn't change, does it?

Edited, Mar 9th 2012 4:37pm by gbaji

I'm more amused at how blindly you walk into the same pits you accuse everyone else of falling into

I suppose if you need to turn this into a "me against gbaji" thing, whatever. I was more just talking about how those pits get dug in the first place. But by all means turn this into a partisan argument if you want.