 Journalist Nicholas D. Kristof thanked Invisible Children for making the film and addressed its criticism, stating that rather than being "white man's burden", when "a warlord continues to kill and torture across a swath of Congo and Central African Republic ... it's a human burden." He also said that complexity had long been "a leading excuse for inaction during atrocities" and that Kony remains a threat in Uganda's neighbour countries, so the simplicity of the film "has left the American public more informed" than it would be otherwise, and that if he "were a Congolese villager", he would "welcome these uncertain efforts over the sneering scorn of do-nothing armchair cynics." Foreign correspondent Roger Cohen called it "simplifying grossly and distorting adeptly to make a valid point: that no effort should be spared to arrest Kony." British film critic Peter Bradshaw wrote that Kony 2012, despite its flaws, "lands an almighty punch. This is a principled campaign ad, and a very, very effective one." Former war correspondent Gotham Chopra said that he understands "the instinctive backlash (really it ’ s irritation)" towards the film and the campaign, but "there is enormous value in the fact that millions of people are talking today about genocide in Africa that were mostly unaware of it yesterday." Jane Bussmann, author of a 2009 book about Kony and the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni, compared the campaign favorably to the "culture of charity-as-industry" as "at least Kony2012 linked suffering to perpetrators, and urged the young American audience it's aimed at to contact a politician." Matthew Green, author of a 2008 book about Kony and the LRA conflict, The Wizard of the Nile, wrote that IC had "achieved more with their 30-minute video than battalions of diplomats, NGO workers and journalists have since the conflict began 26 years ago."
