For the last few days I’ve seen mention of Kony 2012 on Facebook and Youtube. Not knowing what it was, I finally got around to watching the video and what I saw now has me enraged.
The video starts with a man talking about how much the world has changed. How much the older generation(s) fear the future. How connected we are, thanks to the world wide web and social media. Quickly, the it changes pace and focuses on the birth of the narrators child and all the hopes he has for his son. Then, the video introduces us to Jacob.
Jacob is, at the time of the footage, a young boy living in Uganda. Just 10, 11, maybe 12 years old. Just a boy. Jacob is fleeing for his life. Jacob has recently watched his older brother get murdered, by beheading, for trying to escape to freedom. What were they trying to escape from? Well, that is the focus of the video. There is a moment of poignancy just a few minutes into the video, where the narrator is talking with Jacob when he utters words I thought I would never hear a child speak – “It would be better if I were dead”
As a father of two beautiful young girls, with their whole lives in front of them this was hard to hear. Children are supposed to be carefree, full of hope and excitement and yet here was a child, barely beginning to live, saying he wishes for death. How can a child lose hope at such a tender age? What happened to this child to make him ask for death? The answer – Joseph Kony!
Joseph Kony is a dictator in Africa who is abducting children from their homes and forcing them to become his army of slaves. If you have seen the film Blood Diamond, you will see Djimon Hounsou’s character desperately trying to rescue his son from just such an army. Children forced to kill, or be killed. Young girls forced in to prostitution and sex slavery as a means of income for the army. Everything about this man is sheer evil. This alone was enough to start my blood boiling. But, it gets worse…
As the film progresses, the narrator takes the story of the situation to Capitol Hill. The response from the politicians: “There is no benefit, politically, or financially, in us fighting this battle. It’s just not important.”
Did I hear that right? Are you serious? A man is LITERALLY hurting children, thousands of children and turning them in to a paramilitary army and that’s not important? We spend BILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS of US dollars on wars in the Middle East, basically in the pursuit of oil and just a few short hours away, thousands of children are being used as a shield for an evil man and it’s not important?
To hear politicians say that the lives of children are secondary to pursuit of wealth makes me angry. It makes me wonder what might happen to my children. Do our children really have futures living in this society? Do we really want to raise our children in this society? A political system that places wealth at the top of the pyramid sets the stage for a society that views life, any life, as nothing more than a smudge to wiped of our computer screens.
Am I saying we should absolutely be sending the US military to Africa to fight Joseph Kony? Absolutely not! But, if we are willing to send the military anywhere, it should be to places like Uganda and central Africa. Places where the outcome might be something positive. Where lives might be changed for the better. Where despair might be changed to hope. Where children might get a chance at life.
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