More than a third of the Senate introduced a resolution condemning Joseph Kony. Kony captures Congress' attention

The global movement to bring Joseph Kony to justice has reached the halls of Congress.

Lawmakers can’t avoid him: Delaware Sen. Chris Coons was recently asked by his 12 year-old twins and 11-year-old daughter what he’s doing to stop the ruthless African warlord. Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen learned about the Kony 2012 movement on Twitter. And Sen. Roy Blunt said he was at a Missouri caucus in St. Louis when a constituent quizzed him about Kony.


Now, Kony 2012, the viral web video created to spotlight atrocities committed by Kony and remove him from the battlefield, is starting to spur action on Capitol Hill.

More than a third of the 100 senators introduced a bipartisan resolution Wednesday condemning Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army for their “unconscionable crimes against humanity” in central Africa, including rapes, murders and child abductions. House members are giving floor speeches about Kony. And some senators are discussing how to create a bounty for Kony’s capture or death.

“This is about someone who, without the Internet and YouTube, their dastardly deeds would not resonate with politicians. When you get 100 million Americans looking at something, you will get our attention,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a co-sponsor of the resolution who’s now working on the bounty bill. “This YouTube sensation is gonna help the Congress be more aggressive and will do more to lead to his demise than all other action combined.”

Invisible Children’s slickly produced 30-minute film, which has been viewed more than 84 million times on YouTube, is the latest example of social media changing the policy debate and political dynamic on Capitol Hill. In January, powerful Internet sites including Wikipedia and Google launched an online campaign that effectively killed an anti-online piracy bill known as SOPA over First Amendment concerns.

“It’s very powerful,” said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and the most popular lawmaker on Twitter with 1.7 million followers. “If not ending up dead, [Kony] could end up in the International Criminal Court, and it’d be a wonderful thing.”

Graham called the video’s success a “breakthrough on the foreign policy front,” likening it to how Twitter and Facebook sparked political uprisings in places like Tunisia and Egypt.

“You’re seeing at home through the Internet cyberpolitics, how the Arab Spring began,” he added. “This is an example for how domestic purposes, you can have a movement that leads to change.”

The truth is several of these lawmakers — particularly McCain, Graham and Ros-Lehtinen, the House Foreign Relations chairwoman – have been monitoring and speaking out against Kony’s brutalities for years. Last October, President Barack Obama, with Congress’ blessing, deployed 100 U.S. military advisers to central Africa to help track down Kony and the LRA, which has carried out what many call a 26-year campaign of terror in the region.

Kony was indicted in 2005 by the International Criminal Court in the Hague but has evaded capture since.

San Diego-based Invisible Children argues in its video that without sustained public attention on Kony, policymakers will lose interest and Obama could recall those military advisers. Kony 2012 features Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a leading voice on African issues. And it urges viewers to target key celebrities and politicians — from Justin Bieber and Bill Gates to Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry — to keep up the pressure and “make Kony famous” in 2012.

Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), another target, took to the floor Wednesday to speak about Kony, whom she derided as a “mass murderer” and “evil man.”

“The passion that my constituents and others all around the world have shown on this issue through social media outlets has made a tremendous difference in raising awareness about this issue,” she wrote in an email to POLITICO. “Getting involved can and does make a difference.”

The new Senate resolution, spearheaded by Inhofe and Coons, had been set for an April roll out. But the buzz surrounding Kony 2012 accelerated it by several weeks and had attracted support from at least 37 Senate colleagues by Thursday morning.

The non-binding resolution calls for the U.S. to back efforts by Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other neighboring nations to hunt down Kony’s guerilla army, and for continued support for the existing U.S. military presence there. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider the resolution as early as next week.

Coons, the Democratic chairman of that panel’s subcommittee on African Affairs, learned about Kony years ago. But he was surprised one recent weekend when all three of his children lobbied him about the indicted war criminal. They had either come across the video on Facebook or seen Kony 2012 posters hanging in a local school.

“It’s terrific to hear my kids interested in and concerned about humanitarian issues that affect children half a world away,” he told POLITICO.

Coons said he’s open to any option that will bring Kony to justice, but he and Graham acknowledged they’re mulling legislation that would create a bounty or reward for Kony’s head, possibly funded by private sector donors. That’s a similar idea to a House bill introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.).

“We put a bounty out on bin Laden and we did it for Saddam Hussein and it really helped us in Iraq,” Graham said. “That’s where I want to go next.”

Kony 2012’s success hasn’t been all positive. Invisible Children has faced criticism that its portrayal of Kony oversimplified him and exaggerated his crimes. The group also had to respond to questions about how it spends its donations.

And last week, filmmaker Jason Russell was detained by police while screaming and roaming around San Diego in the nude, behavior his family said Wednesday was triggered by extreme stress and exhaustion.

Still, Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey said he’s been encouraged by the reaction so far on Capitol Hill. While the group has worked with Inhofe for years on how to take down the LRA, the issue is new for many lawmakers.

“Getting 34 senators – most who don’t have any personal engagement with the LRA issue – on the record is encouraging,” Keesey said in a phone interview. “It’s a testament to how grassroots mobilization, if it’s done in a targeted way, is really working.”