Do words matter when you train for your own self protection?

Indulge me as I look at the 8 year “War on Terror” (I know the current administration has banned this phrase but let’s call a spade a spade) and compare words and methods from 2 opposing sides.

First, here’s the opening paragraph from a captured Al-Qaeda training manual:

“In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate…To those champions who avowed the truth day and night……And wrote with their blood and sufferings these phrases…The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates…, Platonic ideals…, nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun…. Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils.

They are established as they [always] have been:

* by pen and gun
* by word and bullet
* by tongue and teeth

Next up is a video from the US Army touting its modern “Combatives” program:

Now, Who Is Better Prepared
To Execute Their Mission?

The way I see it, one side has very clear objectives and methods while the other is woefully confused and muddled as to what type of enemy they are training to fight.

I believe the decline in truly preparing US military personnel for war can be traced back to August 10, 1949… that fateful day the powers-that-be decided to change the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding the name change:

“The name-shift from “Department of War” to “Department of Defense” has been seen as an acceptance of Carl von Clausewitz’s second maxim from his famous work On War. Clausewitz states: “The aggressor always pretends to be peace-loving because he would like to achieve his conquests without bloodshed . . . Therefore, aggression must be presented as a defensive reaction by the aggressor nation.”

Unfortunately it seems those in power misunderstood Clausewitz who called for aggression to be met by aggression.

Words do matter because words have inherent meanings to us. Let’s delve a little deeper by getting some clear definitions. The Oxford English Dictionary gives us these definitions of defense and war:

Defense: To provide with a defense or defenses; to defend, protect, guard.

War: Hostile contention by means of armed forces, carried on between nations, states, or rulers, or between parties in the same nation or state; the employment of armed forces against a foreign power, or against an opposing party in the state.

The military is not in the business of defense… it’s in the business of war.

By being ready to fight any threat with the means of war our country is defended. But as you can see from the above video, the US military faces ever more house-to-house and hand-to-hand warfare.

Yet they respond with a tool of defense based on competition rather that a tool of war based on destruction.

The sad thing is the US military didn’t always look at house-to-house/hand-to-hand combat this way. Here is an excerpt from a World War ll-era training manual:

“…This, however, is WAR, not sport. Your aim is to kill your enemy as quickly as possible… So forget the Queensberry rules; forget the term “foul methods.” That may sound cruel but it is still more cruel to take longer than necessary to kill your opponent. “Foul methods” so called, help you to kill quickly. Attack your opponent’s weakest point, therefore. He will attack yours if he gets the chance.” (excerpt from SOE Silent Killing Course, 1942, “Close Combat Files Of Col. Rex Applegate“)

Reading this excerpt after watching the above “Combatives” training video just leaves you shaking your head in disbelief. But then again, the above manual was written when the US had a Department of War. The video reflects the current thinking of a Department of Defense.

How You Can Avoid
This Fatal Trap In Your Life

Unfortunately, I can’t change the path the US military has chosen (it’s way above my pay grade). But I can help you avoid making the same fatal mistake.

And by now it should be apparent your first order of business is to eliminate the phrase Self Defense from your everyday vocabulary.

Yes, I know, I use this term in just about everything I write these days. And there’s a very practical reason I do this. It’s because Self Defense is the search term most used by the public to seek out this type of information. In order for me to reach my intended audience, the fact is, I need to use the term “self defense.”

But unless you’re in the Self Defense training biz, drop the term from your vocabulary.

In training, I never teach self defense.

I teach people how to inflict systemic injury to the human body to bring assailant(s) to a non-functional state (meaning broken, unconscious or dead) so you may safely turn your back on those former threats to your personal safety.

Your focus must remain on what you do to the other guy rather than defending against what he does to you.

In future posts I may elaborate on the defensive terminology you must eliminate from your vocabulary to accomplish this. For now realize there’s no such thing as self defense. There’s only injury. Survivors of violent encounters are those who injure the other guy and, thus, successfully “defend” themselves.

Remember: you can’t effectively achieve these results if you respond to a lethal threat with your Department of Defense. You must always respond to these threats with your Department of War!

Tim Larkin

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