I finished Army of God while standing outside a DC metro station, after exiting for my final stop — it’s a gripping book, one filled with striking images that hammer home the visceral, immersive terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) raids on Congolese villages. It also raises, for progressives committed to resolving the humanitarian monstrosity that is the ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), difficult questions about just what kinds of government intervention and non-state activism might make a real difference.

Russ Feingold, author of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Relief Act of 2009, has responded to the news that President Obama sent 100 combat-equipped troops to Uganda last week. I said I would follow up on that, so here it is.

I have become the exemplar of Obama Derangement Syndrome with a Friday post about the White House starting a mini-war in Africa. It was front-paged on Saturday and caused a bit of debate. So let me make some additional remarks.

I guess Leon Panetta’s admonition against reducing the US military presence had some foreknowledge. The President, in a letter to Congress, just acknowledged that he deployed approximately 100 combat forces to central Africa to assist in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) there.

Wow. Children of War, directed by tonight’s guest Bryan Single, is jaw dropping stunning in both content and delivery. The story of children abducted and forced to join Ugandan rebel Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, then rescued by government soldiers and brought to Rachele Rehabilitation Center is powerfully filmed in black and white over a three-year period.

Single and his crew had unprecedented access to process of healing these children, and focused on three in particular: Akulu, Nyero, and Polycap. Akula was kidnapped and given to rebel leader Abonga Papa as his wife. Polycap and Nyero gradually open up to their counselors and admit to having killed; they come to realize that their will was not their own.