Joseph Kony & Invisible Children: An End to the Madness?

Joseph Kony

This post won’t be dealing explicitly with the war in the Middle-East but will still focus around U.S. warfighters.

It came to my attention a few weeks ago that the U.S. government was finally ready to intervene, at least publicly, in the struggle against the LRA of central Africa. The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, is a rebel organization that has long destabilized the heart of Africa and caused enormous suffering. Their kill count extends upward of 30,000 with mass rape and dismemberment being their more heinous crimes. But perhaps the most widely known of their crimes is the forced induction of children into their ranks, the so-called “Child Soldier.”

It seems not that long ago that an advocacy group came to my local high school in order to raise awareness regarding the plight of the child soldier and those still in danger of the same fate. This group, Invisible Children, had campaigned far and wide to attract government attention to the issue. They had succeeded to some degree and the group’s founding members had even been amongst the rebel army in their quest to confront its leader, Joseph Kony. But aid has been sparse and slow to arrive.

That is until now. President Obama has appointed about 100 armed operators to aid the African hunt for Kony within such nations as Uganda and the Congo. Acting as a training and support force, these American forces will only engage in combat if deemed necessary to ensure their safety. As for their makeup, the most logical assumption (and the correct one) is that these operators are Special Forces. Given the how elusive Kony has proven to be over his nearly 30 year reign of terror, it is no surprise that the U.S. “advisors” being deployed are of the highest caliber.

It is operations like these, however, that reminds one of the far-reaching hand that is the American warfighter. Many belief the U.S. is already part of a “Shadow War” in Pakistan and history has shown us that the American public is not always the first to know where or when U.S. soldiers deploy. One could even hope that the role U.S. SOF (Special Operations Forces) are playing in the LRA conflict is actually greater than that which is reported. Because, for once, that is a mission I can 100% support.

Source: Al Jazeera – Obama Sends Military Advisors to Uganda