If you sign up for a martial arts class, regardless of cultural origins, all of them will start by teaching you the basics. In the case of karate, once you master the basics, you get a black belt and are considered ready to begin learning how to fight effectively taking into account your own strengths and weaknesses. The basics are just the foundation.
The physical fighters of the military spend a lot of time and effort learning how to fight and maintaining physical fitness. If you added BUD/S to the rest of the disciplines I studied in the USN, I would have never gotten through any of them. An electronics tech should have an idea of how to use anything in their space as a weapon and should know what is more deadly but they should not be derelict in learning electronics so that they can lift weights, run in sand, and spar with martial instructors. We specialize not because we are incompetent to do other things (though some surely are). Rather we specialize because learning everything is impossible and is an impediment to doing anything at the highest level.
If you are ever given a choice to go into a fight carrying just the tip of the spear or, just the shaft of the spear, which would you choose? If the choice is mine, I am choosing the shaft. It can be used like the bo staff of traditional Japanese martial arts. It could be broken in half and used as escrima or Kali sticks from the Filipino martial traditions. The point is that you fight differently if you have the entire spear, just the point or just the shaft. This is the basis of my suggestion that everyone who is eligible for full voting citizenship, should be eligible for military service. No, you should not expect a paraplegic in a wheelchair to pass the Marine PT test but we should expect them to do what they can and the military should have some pretty detailed knowledge about what that is and what they should be taught.
While Pete Hegseth understands beer pong to an Olympic level, his understanding of all things military would not be out of place in a satirical cartoon written for 6 year olds. The overwhelming majority of the military never pulls a trigger or slits a throat. We drive, mechanic, build, type, decode, cook, paint, navigate, pilot, nurse, account, play musical instruments, translate, document and and and. If you were to have everyone that was not a trigger puller stand down, it would not be long before the trigger pullers discovered the value of logistics experts. Hegseth is so completely wrong that it almost seems intentional. It is difficult to believe someone could actually be so clueless but either he is or, he is like his boss, working for their Vladdy Daddy.
