"KONY 2012"

So, what would you say should be done about instances like this? Just leave them alone and let them continue to grow worse over time, until it becomes a direct threat to first world countries and much more difficult to fix? One thing is for sure, doing nothing will not fix it; doing something and failing is better than doing nothing, even if we lose time and money doing so. Otherwise, I feel that our morals take a bigger hit than the material losses.

The whole situation is just too blown up. The LRA is as good as dead; on the steady decline for the past 10 years. As long as no one directly supports/funds them, they'll just choke to death out of lack of funds. African infrastructure, at the same time, has been getting better (albeit slowly). They have the systems in place to minimize, if not completely prevent, whatever the LRA try to pull off.

So yes, just leave them alone, and they WILL die. They haven't been active for years. The issues the film points out are a decade old. Ugandans themselves can go and tell you that, and they have.

I mean the LRA hasn't been in Uganda for nearly a decade. What will giving money to the Ugandan government do at that point? There exists such a thing as sovereignty and national autonomy. The Ugandan military can't just enter another country under the pretence of hunting down a war criminal with an army comprised of children, many of them having already died of maltreatment and malnutrition. In addition, the army itself is no less corrupt than Kony, with frequent allegations of looting and rape.

I didn't say that, you did. Just look at how they killed Bin Laden, even that was not a real demonstration of the best they can do; you are vastly underestimating our armed forces. My dad has a long time friend who is a Ranger, and I've been around him quite a bit over the years. Everything from how they carry themselves, their reaction time, everything, it's just, different. Combine that with the state of the art weapons they are given, and they can take out literally anybody on this planet if they become a target, no matter what kind of security they have. The only limitations are political in natural, the backlash against our nation as a whole would be pretty much international if we started assassinating the heads of country for UN members like China. Kony has no such cushioning.

Kony has the cushioning of being in another country, and that's all he needs as protection to prevent any NATO forces to go and assassinate him. He's already internationally wanted, but that doesn't mean an international power can go and pick him up. It just means that in whatever country he happens to be in, that military has the right and responsibility to capture him.

The effectiveness of killing Bin Laden is debatable. It was more a show of force than anything. The consequences for it were an almost complete breakdown in relations with Pakistan, as well as a rise in insurgence attacks all over the middle east and North Africa. Through killing one figure head, not even a lynch pin, hundreds of people died as collateral.

I know this is about KONY 2012 and I know that it's more of a fad than anything else, but that doesn't change anything. Millions of ignorant followers are arguably more powerful than millions of informed ones; their opinions are stronger because they lack the knowledge of any flaws of the movement. I use this as a plus because uninformed people are much better at spreading a cause. In this case, it's more important to get quantity over quality, because sadly government today is a popularity contest. Unless we play their numbers game, nothing will get done, and if nothing is done, it will get worse, that is my genuine feeling on matters of this nature. It's not a matter of "more harm than good", in my eyes, regardless of what this accomplishes.

Ignorance is always worse than well informed opinions. I've said this before but "Idealism is admirable, however uninformed idealism is dangerous and self destructive." Their opinions are not at all stronger, because it's just that much easier to belittle the movement, similar to Occupy. In fact, it just makes the whole movement look more silly, as it just becomes a case of a bunch of drones not knowing what they are fighting for.

You said it yourself, it's a popularity contest, but not only of who our leaders are, but also what we believe in. While our countries always flaunt around about the importance of democracy, that sadly isn't an issue people are fighting for right now. There are so many totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Africa and the Middle East, including Uganda, but no one's fund raising money to put a good infrastructure in place in those countries to prevent it. It's just that promoting democracy is not as cool or romantic as going in a country guns blazing and shooting down the bad guy. That is essentially what Kony12 promotes, and is essentially what every other intervention by the West has promoted for the past half century. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's the right decision.

Frankly this is just an issue of the west's Saviour Complex, and it's inability to get over the fact that we're not colonialists anymore. We don't have any responsibility, nor authority, to go intervene in a foreign country. Almost every instance in which we enter a third world country, things are much worse off after we're done than before we interfered in the first place. Iraq is in shambles, the Taliban is stronger than ever in Afghanistan, Middle-eastern insurgency has hit an all time high.

People get the wrong impression that sweeping, (relative) overnight changes, are what makes things better. This just isn't the case. Throwing money at something, or publicizing a cause does very little of anything. It takes years, even decades to make the slightest in positive, win-win, changes.