The Foreign Service Journal, May 2012

M A Y 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 The Power of Video Last fall, the U.S. Africa Command ( www.africom.mil ) de ployed about 100 military advisers to Kampala to as- sist local forces working to defeat Joseph Kony, a brutal Ugandan war- lord who heads the Lord’s Resistance Army. Since 1987, Kony and his forces have forcibly recruited between 60,000 and 100,000 child soldiers, killed or maimed thousands of people, and dis- placed around two million people throughout Central Africa. The Inter- national Criminal Court has sought his arrest for crimes against humanity, and the LRA is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. The Obama administration author- ized the deployment of the advisers pursuant to the 2010 Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. The goal is to support the governments of Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, as well as the African Union and United Nations, in coun- tering the threat the LRA poses to the entire region. The strategy has four main objec- tives: increased protection of civilians; the apprehension or removal of Kony and senior LRA commanders from the battlefield; promotion of defections and support of the disarmament, de- mobilization and reintegration of re- maining fighters; and provision of con- tinued humanitarian relief to affected communities. The military component is part of a comprehensive effort in- volving U.S. embassies in the affected countries, U.S. Agency for Interna- tional Development programs and contributions from nongovernmental organizations. Despite this intensified interna- tional campaign to bring Kony to jus- tice, the issue largely stayed off the world’s radar screen until March. (The fact that the U.S. contingent is operat- ing strictly in an advisory capacity, not as combat troops, is presumably the main reason their role has caused no real controversy here.) Then Invisible Children, Inc. ( www. invisiblechildren.com ), a n onprofit founded in 2005, released a 30-minute documentary, “Kony 2012” ( www. kony2012.com ). In it, director Jason Russell, one of Invisible Children’s co- founders, talks to his young son, Gavin, about his work, and invites supporters to make Kony “famous” so that he can be brought to justice. The video quickly went viral. As of late March, it had been viewed 85 mil- lion times on YouTube ( www.you tube.com ) , and nearly 17 million times on Vimeo ( vimeo.com ) , and has spread across social media networks with amazing speed. C YBERNOTES I t seems to me that the United States doesn’t have to beat on its chest. It doesn’t need to strut. It can afford some humility, and it can afford to let others sort of step forward because everybody knows who’s got all the as- sets at the end of the day. And I believe Madeleine Albright was absolutely right: We are the indis- pensable nation. There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and the leadership of the United States. And everybody in the world knows that. It’s just a fact of life. So I think sometimes we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility. — Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, in his March 15 remarks accepting the 2012 Elliott Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service from the National Academy of Public Administration ( www.napawash.org ).