GANG MEMBERS ARE NOT SOLDIERS

The Daily News has printed its share of stories about street gangs.
We have to do it - it's news, it's relevant and it's important for
the public to know what's going on.

It's an issue right now in Kamloops because there are three young men
before the courts charged with trafficking cocaine.

Drug trafficking is a nasty business, one of several heinous
activities in which low-life criminal organizations engage.

Their practices bring down the very society that has given them life,
health and unprecedented opportunity.

Yet for all they have been given thus far into their lives - so lucky
to call Canada home - their response is to diminish the civilization
that has made them safe and comfortable their whole lives.

This is not to assume that they've been mollycoddled all their lives
- - maybe they haven't. But a lot of people have had a lot of problems;
overcoming crap in life is the norm.

And so, among all their other activities and attitudes that
right-minded people everywhere vigorously reject, we also take
exception to the names they've chosen for their dirt-bag operations:
a gang called Independent Soldiers? A gang called United Nations?

Perhaps by inking their skin with respected names, they think they
gain some otherwise unobtainable nobility.

Certainly, compared to all the crimes these groups are involved in,
the names they audaciously usurp is perhaps a small thing. But let's
not let it pass.

That a gang of thugs would adopt the moniker Independent Soldiers is insulting.

We write this as a 21-year-old woman named Karine Blais, a real
soldier with a real regiment (the prestigious Royal 22nd), has just
arrived home to Quebec in a flag-draped casket.

She was killed by the Taliban, who, in many ways, resemble the street
gangs here that push dope and murder people.

About the same time that a bomb took Blais, the Taliban also executed
a young couple in the street.

It would appear the Taliban and the Independent Soldiers aren't all
that different.

But no street gang deserves to call itself soldiers, not when real
soldiers are putting their lives on the line to make the world a
better place. Not when real soldiers - 21 year olds - are coming home
to Mom and Dad in pieces.

Real soldiers go through rigorous training. Real soldiers are
disciplined and learn to be brave.

By the time real soldiers finish boot camp, they are already twice
the men and women that street-gang thugs will ever be.

Real soldiers risk their lives for others.

What they do and what they're prepared to do is make our cities safe
so the rest of us can get on with our lives and make our communities better.

Real soldiers learn to live with discomfort, grief and nagging fear.
Is it because the pay's so good?

They do it because they want to make a positive difference in their
own lives while contributing to the good of all.

Real soldiers are a credit to their communities and their country.
Those so-called Independent Whatevers are nothing of the sort.

And as for calling themselves independent . . . well, how independent
do you feel in those handcuffs?

Hear that heavy clang?

That's a steel door, "soldier"-boy.