Pelton, who claims to have located Osama bin Laden in 2003 (“I kept saying he was in Chitral then, which he was.”), is calling his manhunt Expedition Kony and has teamed up with two filmmakers, Ross Fenter and Rob Swain, to document the experience. To pay for the media part, the trio has set up an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign.

Pelton says his use of crowdfunding offers an alternative to traditional charities whereby the donor is part of the mission—donors supposedly have front row seats to the action. According to Pelton, those who contribute to his campaign will have a say “in making real-time decisions” via direct participation or web feeds.

Wait, so the video wasn't complete bull?

The U.S. State Department has offered $5 million for information leading to Kony’s arrest, and he’s been wanted since 2005 by the International Criminal Court on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Most of the world learned of Kony’s atrocities last year via Invisible Children's viral video Kony 2012. (More than 100 million people saw the video and about as many saw the meltdown of Jason Russell, founder of the controversial group.)

I had figured this was all fake. I was wrong.

The problem wasn't it was fake. For me there were three problems with this campaign:

1 - Not the worst one, he used his son shamelessly as a promotion tool.

2 - The crimes are presented as happening currently while they happened 20 years before, and Kony wasn't even in Uganda any-more.

3 - The big problem: it was extremely partial. He only accused Kony, and said nothing about the Uganda government, which they are allied with, and who they almost presented as heroes fighting Kony. But in reality, this government and its army committed equivalent war crimes. 

But at the end, I don't know what to think about Invisible Children, maybe they are to add to the list of well intentioned people that get manipulated by authorities, or that can't handle the complex reality of issues and end messing with them.

Thank you for this perspective.

It's clear there's a lot of bad things in the region, and it's unclear how we can make a difference.