COLUMN: Uganda isn’t Vietnam

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President Barack Obama announced Friday he is sending roughly 100 American troops into East Africa to assist in the apprehension of Joseph Kony, the commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Many people are criticizing Obama because they believe he is entering the U.S. into another war.

I am proud to call myself one of the many Americans who encouraged Obama to take this action.

I have been working with the nonprofit organization Invisible Children for the past five years. We have been working to end the 25-year-long war in Central East Africa, where the LRA has been abducting children, forcing them to kill their parents and become child soldiers and sex slaves.

We believe this atrocity is a crime against humanity and we have been called to end it. Some of my best friends have been affected by the war, so I am dedicating my life to end it.

While many Americans see Obama’s action as the beginning to a new war for America, the troops are only being sent into Uganda to be military advisers.

According to Jedidiah Jenkins, spokesman for Invisible Children, the troops “will not be involved in any offensive action. So any reference to an invasion or new war by the U.S. is absolutely ridiculous.”

While the “military advisors” are being compared to President Kennedy’s initial action in Vietnam, I do not believe the situations have enough similarities to merit the comparison.

The war in Vietnam was political. The war against the LRA, on the other hand, is taking place for one reason: stopping the terror and human rights abuses caused by Kony and his troops throughout Africa.

Yes, it originally started as a civil war against Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni. However, the LRA has moved out of Uganda and is now wreaking havoc in South Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, three countries without ties to Museveni or his presidency. They are killing, abducting and injuring civilians to loot villages for food and ammunition so they can continue to survive in the bush.

Many American citizens did not support the Vietnam War. The war against Kony, however, has been demanding the attention of hundreds of thousands of youth in America for the last eight years.

A bill requiring Obama to take action against the LRA was “the most widely supported African issue legislation in modern American history,” Invisible Children said in a press release. It had bipartisan support in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Obama in May of 2010.

Jenkins said this isn’t another Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq.

“It isn’t a political issue. It is a human issue,” said Invisible Children Founder Jason Russell.

The bottom line is this is not a war for American gain. This is an action being taken to save thousands of lives in Central East Africa, and to prevent children from being abducted and forced to fight in a war older than they are.