Gangsters in the Military?

[daveT]

A few weeks ago, I was watching some show on CNN and the subject was about gangs in Los Angeles. It wasn't well-done, but there was an interview with a young guy who didn't seem like a terrible, sick person.

His big dream was to join the Marines. "I would rather die a hero than... you know..... die a statistic."

He was not eligible to join the military because he had a felony. In a shot of irony, they showed the downtown sky-line with his voice-over saying "there's no where to go."

I always believed that one thing that helps gangs thrive is that the members have never seen much more than their neighborhood. They are able to know that there is a larger world out there, but I don't think that they can conceptually grasp what that means. Perhaps joining the military would show them a larger world than what they are used to, but going to fight in Iraq is probably not a great way to "see other stuff."

But can the military be a "way out?" If the the gangs were disbursed throughout the country, would the problem persist if a Crip was forced to live next to a Blood in Smalltown, USA. What if these same guys were forced to trust each other with weapons and fight with each other? Is it a stretch to even trust these guys with weapons. Don't they have a larger, more unglamorous, grasp of what weapons are than some kid playing Halo?

I have heard that some gangs are actually sending members to the military to train their ranks. I wonder how many of these people are reformed, when after two years, they see that people of certain race aren't that racist, that certain people have respect, and that they have some kind of opportunity?

Can the military be used to reform the lowest and most violent classes of our society?