If you don't know what I'm talking about with Kony 2012 there is a video on youtube and probably a thousand other places that talks about a guy named Joseph Kony. He is a warlord in Uganda and an overall piece of human garbage and should be killed as soon as possible.
But, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of African warlards with territorial jurisdiction that we don't give a rip about. We, as Americans don't really care that much about human suffering in general. I guess I should rephrase that, we care for a little bit when its brought to our attention and then we get bothered by the inconvenience of it and go back to watching American Idol. Take Haiti for example, or the victims of the Japanese tsunami, we don't care at all about the suffering in Kashmir or Darfur or in oppressive South American countries ruled by horrible regimes.
So naturally when I start seeing Kony 2012 all over the place and the viral response to it red flags go up for me. He has been terrorizing Uganda for over 20 years now. They have not killed him, we have not cared....until apparently now. The Obama administration made it official policy to kill him in 2010. More red flags go up. What business is it of the United States to kill small time thugs in another sovereign nation? On a personal level the guy should be killed. In fact if there were a mercenary group raising money to buy weapons to go kill him, I would donate, readily. But he has nothing to do with our national security. Then I found the answer. In 2009 it was announced that Uganda had discovered an oil field that housed something like 2.5 billion barrels of oil. It is as simple as that. We still don't care about genocide or terrorism or general human suffering but we will go to war for some one's oil.
I hope Kony is killed. I also hope it is by a citizen of Uganda with a sense of self-determination that they will not take that kind of thuggery any more. If he is simply taken out by some foreign military who then leaves there will surely be a vacuum left that will be rapidly filled with another warlord.
6 years ago
