Combat Pragmatist/Real Life

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War

General

  • War in general. All warfare exists around this trope, as does the development of any new tactics and technology. Despite all the hubbub about honor and glory, the point is to win, and that is done by making it unfair to your side's advantage. Yes, there are rules, and there are standards of honor (or, more accurately, professionalism) that are followed, but even when these are adhered to, the overall point is to still make things unfair to your advantage. A fair fight just means you give more chances for your enemy to hurt or kill you and/or your comrades.
    • Belligerents can make arguments about fighting "honorably" or "like gentlemen" all they want. They only make the accusations of dishonor and cowardice when it's the other side doing it. Even if they don't resort to equally "dirty" tactics immediately when the war starts to tip in the other side's favor, eventually there will be a breaking point of desperation in where they don't care anymore. If they don't, it clearly means that the the glory and honor of battle itself was more important to them than actual victory.
    • Colonel Jeff Cooper on the "Fair Fight": "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!"
  • Contrary to the popular image, the knightly warfare wasn't exactly chivalrous. The usual means of Medieval warfare was Indirect Warfare - instead of attacking the enemy army, the knights attacked the enemy's means of waging war. This is known as chevauchee and meant attacking the enemy's agriculture, his peasants - yes, they were prime targets, as they were crucial for producing food! - his supplies, his logistics, assassinating his leaders, and arranging ambushes whenever possible. Field battles were considered as an erratic and uncertain way of winning battles, and most field battles occurred when one of the armies had trapped the other and the other had no way of averting it. Attacking castles and cities was considered as the worst possible option.
  • Most armies will start a large war doing the complete opposite of this trope, or continue for some time, often using very visual and quite atrocious tactics, before buckling up and getting creative. They'll start to focus on only that which works really well, and to hell with honour and such. Examples being the Prussians during The Napoleonic Wars (though the French started out as this trope, to great success), the Union during the American Civil War, and the British Commonwealth and French forces during World War One (after two or three years). Generally, though it might seem obvious, Armed Forces at the end of long wars are full of very "dishonourable" soldiers and officers who are very, very good at their jobs.
  • Values Dissonance and Rule of Symbolism can have a large effect on this. What is and is not considered "fair" or "honorable" in war can be a matter of culture and time. For example, during World War I, the German Empire vowed to execute any American POW found to have fought with a shotgun for war crimes because the shotgun was the weapon of the hunt (for game), and the Germans found it insulting. (American soldiers were using shotguns because they were very effective in clearing out trenches.) As for time, it used to be a war crime to drop bombs from the air (the Hague Convention of 1899).
  • Pretty much every air force in the world that gets the chance would rather destroy the enemy air forces on the ground, before they get in the air, rather then let them get in the air and have a fighting chance. A preferred tactic is to hit the runway first, preventing the planes from escaping, and allowing you to destroy them at your leisure.
  • Certain types of Combat Pragmatism are illegal by the laws of warfare, not the least of which is not wearing an identifiable uniform. You break the rules, you lose their protection, such as eligibility for Geneva Convention rights.
  • Combat engineers are the ultimate Combat Pragmatist troops. Not only mines are their expertise, but also Booby Trap is an example of not fighting fair.
    • There's a saying: "If the engineer wants to get you by the balls, he will". There are - for a lack of a better word - downright evil ways to booby trap objects. One memorable story was about a booby trap that was set under a kitchen sink. The electrical circuit to detonate it was set inside the drain, with two metal plates separated by a sugar cube. The moment you turn on the water to wash your hands - boom.
    • Combat engineers take this trope Up to Eleven. They are trained in mine warfare, booby trapping and improvised munitions. The classical boobytrap is to tilt a picture on the wall slightly, then rig an explosive charge with a mercury trigger behind it. When an enemy soldier - usually an officer - attempts to right the harmless-looking picture on the wall --- KABOOM!
  • Note, however, that adhering to certain rules in warfare can be a form of Combat Pragmatism as well. There is a good reason for NOT allowing troops to attack civilian targets at will, achieve objectives through deception, treachery and sheer terror, alter action plans unpredictably to increase personal safety at any cost, ignore command structure and loot their own army's supplies for additional resources. Arguably, in the course of the war, the troops must be kept controllable and sane. If methodical application of combat pragmatism turns one's own men into dangerous killing machines, and enemy's civilian population into desperate fighters for survival, the long-term perspectives are not very bright.
    • Then too, you want to end the war sometime, preferably with your objective secured without to much expense. If your enemy is too anxious to get even or thinks you have some trick in mind he won't negotiate. At a lower level, the enemy is more likely to surrender if he knows you treat prisoners well.
  • This is guerrilla warfare. If the dedication is there, an irregular fighting force will do anything it takes to demoralize a militarily superior foe.
  • Snipers in general either are this trope or on the receiving end of this trope. Many snipers try to have a consistent pattern when killing the enemy, such as shooting the first in line, to make no one want to lead a patrol, to ruin enemy moral. Of course, snipers are often attacked with artilerly barrages.
  • The normal form of combat between tribal peoples is a function of thievery or assassination. When they fight honorably they have elders waiting to call it off if things get to hot. In other words it is a duel or a tournament rather then a battle.
    • More complex societies with professional feudal (loosely organized armies of warriors who are payed by rent to train in martial arts) or bureaucratic (the kind we think of that is kind of like a factory in it's emphasis on collective efficiency) armed forces are no exception. Armies are effectively giant siege trains designed to occupy cultivated land and cities. To do that you have to be capable of fighting face to face as well as reducing strongholds and holding them (even if you decline to do these things on this or that occasion) and there is no getting round it. But no sensible army gives up the basics though they might relegate that to scouts and spies and other specialists.
  • One reason frontier warfare is so brutal is that people are fighting for their own purposes rather then those of their governments. That is they are interested in direct possession of land, portable property, mates, slaves, etc. Those have two common settings:
    1. Not serious. Low-risk petty raids, especially cattle rustling, or what amounts to skirmishes between neighbor gangs venting steam and showing off. Nobody is interested in fighting to the death or wants to wind up in a vendetta, so it's mostly limited to hit-and-run and warning shots. Occasionally someone is killed, but this may go on indefinitely with less than one fatality per fight on the average. The rest of time these groups may trade (one variant was described as "the townies cheat the nomads, the nomads steals back in raids about as much"), and neither wants the relations to sour too much.
    2. Dead serious. The level of actual armed conflict varies greatly with circumstances, but the goal is to uproot or annihilate an opponent. Often goes on forever, until the third party intervenes, and/or ends in a genocide (or rounding up the survivors and selling them into slavery somewhere far away, which also removes them permanently).
    • Likewise rulers are interested in controlling realms not in personally farming them. And corpses can't pay taxes. While soldiers are just fighting either because it is a job (for privates) or because it is the Family Business (for officers especially aristocrats). Thus the reason they fight comparatively honorably is that it is in their interest.
    • And equally when that tacit agreement wears thin it is sometimes because of an import of concepts from the frontier like race paranoia or "living space" or whatever.

Specific

  • Sun Tzu, general during the Warring States period in China, not only was a warfare pragmatist to put others to shame, but quite literally wrote the book on it. It's worth noting that the same book, The Art of War, is still used to teach tactics and strategy (fighting dirty on army scale) to this day.
  • George Washington was a warfare Pragmatist. Launching a major attack on Christmas morning, when the enemy was sure to be drunk/sleeping/both, is only his most infamous act of dishonorable warfare. Many historians have attributed the American victory to this.
    • One wonders how else you'd expect to beat a town-full of Badass Mercenaries. They also had heard the Americans were coming, and didn't care. Bad idea.
      • Actually, the Hessian commander put his men on alert after getting warned. However, a few hours later they were attacked by about a dozen men who inflicted a few casualties and fled. The Hessian commander, Von Rahl, decided that this was the American attack. He told his men that "those wretched peasants" were beaten and told them to stand down and celebrate the holiday. And a few hours later...
  • The North Vietnamese also took advantage of a day that was a holiday when they launched the Tet Offensive on January 30th, 1968. That was Tet, the first day of the New Year, probably the most important holiday of the Vietnamese calendar. On top of that, they had previously announced that they would honor a two-day ceasefire to allow the celebration of the holiday. Given the scope of the attack, they never had any intention of honoring that ceasefire. Worse still, they didn't attack soldiers: they attacked camera crews, hoping that the footage sent back to America would lessen morale at home. It was at that point that the war really started to be perceived negatively by the public.
    • They also used many other effective tactics. Littering the woods with booby traps designed to wound soldiers so when the others came to rescue them the Vietnamese would shoot them. The tunnel system drew a platoon of Americans with a small force and then had reserves pop up out of the ground and destroy them. They also used prostitutes as spies.
  • Egypt's invasion of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Not only was it a religious holiday for Jews, it was also during Ramadan - the Muslim fasting month where war is supposed to be ceased. Some Arabs know it as the Ramadan War, by the way, while others call it the October War. In Egypt it's usually just called '73.
    • During Yom Kippur it is traditional to fast from sundown of the previous evening to the next sundown--so not only were they praying, they were also underfed.
    • It's generally agreed that this actually backfired on the Egyptians: Attacking on a day when everyone was easily reachable, when the roads were empty (Yom Kippur is the one day in the year when even secular Israelies avoid driving) meant that mobilisation of the reserves was very quick. Had the Egyptians attacked on, say, Passover, when everyone's either abroad on holiday or stuck in traffic jams, the result would've been more to their advantage...
    • On the other hand, an Arab will tell you that the ultimate failure was really more because the North Africans didn't pull through with the amphibious assault that Gaddafi suggested. Well that, and Sadat had purged one of his two competent generals for political reasons, and the second had been killed while visiting the front lines during the War of Attrition.
    • On the third hand, it is probably better for the Arab nations that they lost, as Israel is the ultimate combat pragmatist, and had they lost the war they would have used nuclear weapons on the Arab nations.
  • Speaking of Egypt vs. Israel, Israel's actions during the Six-Day War are all about this. Israel attacked first, even though they had not (yet) been attacked. A large-scale surprise air strike that was the opening of the Six-Day War, with Israel destroying about the entire Egyptian air force, which guaranteed Israeli air superiority for the rest of the war.
  • The reason for the crushing defeat of the French by the English during the Battle of Crécy.
    • Well, one of them anyway. The main one was that the French knights were too gung-ho for their own good, and started the battle before their army was anywhere near ready.
    • Various battles of the Hundred Years War, particularly Agincourt, have earned this reputation for the English. The French expected a civilized battle with knights on horseback and everything, and the English just shot a lot of arrows at them. Whether that's the reality or not, the reputation still stands.
      • Actually at Agincourt, the French attacked on foot. The original battle plan was about dismounted knights attacking on foot at center, then when the battle was engaged, the mounted knights attacking at flanks, performing an envelopment operation, and a local knight, Isembard d'Agincourt, attacking at the English rear with his retinue as he knew the local pathways. Because of extremely bad leadership, rain which had turned the fields into mud and that Isembard d'Agincourt was more interested in looting the English baggage than fighting, it all ended up in Total Snafu.
    • "Knightly"? Definitely. Civilized? Not so much. Many times the French lost battles because their just so proud cavalry charged over their own infantry and crossbowmen making the fight actually easier for the English. But hey, turns out France had reserves. Many reserves. And from 1400 onward, also lots of gunpowder weapons.
      • This happened just twice - at Crecy 1346 and Agincourt 1415. The reason why the English prevailed was that they just had better discipline and better generals. The French eventually learned this, abolished the feudal army and set up a professional army consisting of competent professionals - knights, infantry and artillery.
  • Legendary Vietnam-era Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock demonstrated this when he was sent to one camp that was being constantly harassed by a good enemy sniper. After observing the terrain and seeing where the enemy's targets were when shot, he figured out where the sniper had to be shooting from. Does he then go into the field to engage in a sniper duel, an honourable clash between two expert warriors? No. He sets up a rocket that's targeted at the sniping position and waits. The next time the sniper attacks, the rocket is fired, and it starts raining sniper chunks.
    • Did you seriously just say "sniper duel"? Everything about snipers fall under this trope, starting with their very existence.
      • Standard doctrine for dealing with snipers involves artillery fire.
  • The US Navy is developing a railgun designed to fire projectiles at Mach 8 and sink a cruiser or aircraft carrier from 400 miles away. Said one of the officers on the project, "I don't ever want to see our boys in a fair fight".
    • The damage the railgun can do is comparable to that of a cruise missile, but a ship could carry a hundred times more railgun projectiles.
      • Seems the battleship will be back!
      • How about the Gunboat? Think of this much firepower in something that can actually sail up the James River should the need arise.
  • American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, rather than fight it out on the battlefield, had the idea to devastate the South's economy by pillaging and burning everything from Atlanta to Savannah up to Richmond. It worked almost too well. It took years to rebuild the South's economy after the war. Arguably his actions brought the war to an end earlier, which was his justification.
    • In the process, he more or less invented the modern understanding of total war: if they're giving you everything they've got, then everything they've got is fair game. Since most of that stuff is behind their lines, this wasn't very useful in most wars in later years...until World War II, where you could fly over enemy lines if you had air superiority. Lo-and-behold, we now have strategic bombing.
    • This concept is Older Than Print. The warfare during the Age of Chivalry wasn't particularly chivalrous; rather than risking troops on field battles, knights far rather waged war by attrition - by fighting the enemy's ability to fight rather than his forces. That meant killing his peasants, burning his crops and devastating his countryside.
  • The Marine Corps Line Combat program is all about disabling, crippling, and killing your enemy as viciously and quickly as possible. Examples: crushing a throat, breaking the Achilles tendon, then driving your heel into their sternum, then finally crushing their face with your boot.
    • Marine Corps Line Combat is deprecated. Even people who used to teach it acknowledge its NON pragmatism compared to the MCMAP, which is essentially MMA.
      • Line Combat wasn't pragmatic because it only taught killing attacks. There were no provisions for non-lethal takedowns, which modern warfare often requires.
  • Richard Marcinko, U.S Navy SEAL. He wrote in his book Rogue Warrior how he was sitting in the Pentagon during Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. Everything went wrong, including a bus full of Iranian civilians accidentally showing up at the landing zone. When the men at the landing zone asked what to do about the civilians, Marchinko said, "Kill them". He got some strange looks for that from his fellow soldiers. Needless to say, they weren't killed.
    • In fact, one of his Ten Commandments of Spec War is: "There Are No Rules - Win At All Costs".
  • Naval mines are the main weapon of the Finnish Navy. Likewise, Finnish warships are basically examples of Glass Cannon - armed as heavily as possible for their size and intended to retreat in the safety of the archipelago immediately once they have delivered their payload. Hiding behind an island is a far better idea than going and exchanging shots in the open.
  • This argument has long been used as the defense for the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, given the choice between (a) killing high numbers of Japanese instantly and convincing the Japanese to surrender quickly or (b) killing even more of them (possibly all of them, as they had declared they would fight to the last) as well as the predicted one million US casualties over the two years that Operation Downfall was predicted to take.
    • This was also the reason behind the US fire bombing of Tokyo, which in turn brings up another interpretation of this argument. In March of 1945, the US conducted a bombing raid on Tokyo. By itself this was nothing special, as the US had been bombing Tokyo continuously throughout the war, however what was special was the weapon they were using; napalm, a brand new weapon at the time. Keep in mind that most of the buildings in Tokyo at this time were made of wood and tar paper. When napalm was dropped all over the city, it didn't just burn; it incinerated. Over 100,000 Japanese were killed in one night, more than were killed at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet this incident gets considerably less attention than the atomic bombings which brings up issues of morality; is it really more wrong to use one extremely powerful weapon to instantly kill large numbers of people than it is to use less powerful weapons to kill the same amount of, or even more, people over a period of time?
  • Likewise, the Japanese were certainly no strangers to these tactics during the war. This was the reasoning behind the Pearl Harbor attack, both the attack being by surprise and the way the Japanese didn't break off diplomatic relations with the US until minutes before the attack began. During the war, the Japanese used extremely aggressive tactics against Allied troops; booby traps, suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks, pretending to surrender, using civilians as shields, attaching bombs to civilians, and telling their civilians that the Allies would do horrible things to them if they were taken prisoners. It's no wonder that the Allied invasion of Japan was estimated to take another two years and one million Allied casualties.
    • At some point, however, their over dependence on those tactics ended up losing what pragmatism there was. Their refusal to retreat and desperate suicide attacks just ended up depleting their forces of experienced veterans faster.
    • Also a lot of the resentment of the Japanese stemmed from the fact that it really wasn't combat pragmatism but simple meanness on many occasions. A lot of the tortured prisoners were tortured, less for information but so that they could demonstrate to their enemies that they tortured people.
  • Russian militaries have used their country's harsh winter, immense size, and destroying of supplies left behind to aid in invasions; from Charles XII of Sweden during the Great Northern War, Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and Adolf Hitler during World War II. Rather than fully engaging the enemy immediately, the Russians retreated back slowly, luring the enemy deeper and deeper into the country, causing the invaders to overextend their supply lines, the "Scorched Earth" policy of destroying supplies left behind to prevent the enemies from using them, and waiting for the winter (nicknamed "General Winter") to set in which would greatly slow down the enemy's advance, badly damage enemy morale, and cause huge amounts of cold weather injuries and deaths.
    • During World War II, Joseph Stalin issued Order 270, which made it a treasonable offense for a Soviet soldier to be taken prisoner, allowing officers to shoot soldiers even suspected of trying to desert, and made the soldiers' families susceptible to arrest. He also issued Order 227, which required the establishment of penal battalions comprised of soldiers with disciplinary infractions who were ordered to be shot if they retreated.
  • The reason why the Ninja were so successful as spies and assassins was because of their complete disregard for the code of honor that almost all warriors in Japan were expected to follow, as well as the social code that civilians followed. Ninja had no issue with running from fights, catching their enemy off guard and using weapons disguised as farming or gardening implements. They also would disguise themselves as farmers, gardeners and even geisha and prostitutes. A samurai would literally die before being seen dressed as anything other than a proper nobleman.
    • There were also female ninja, called Kunoichi, who did very well in disguise, because who are you expecting to stick a knife in your back? Not the pretty lady in the lovely kimono, the geisha makeup and the tessen, a fan with metal struts...
  • Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes.
  • The specialty of the Sardinian military and its Royal Italian successor was more fighting dirty than fighting fair. The Sardinian Army had little money or space for actual cavalry, so they trained the Bersaglieri, fast running light infantry trained to quickly form an infantry square, repeal cavalry charges and then charge the cavalry as it pulled back to regroup, possibly on the flank (they actually charged Russian cavalry busy attacking French infantry at the Battle of the Chernaya, routing the Russians). During World War II, the Italian Alpini (mountain troops) ski troops got a scary fame in Soviet Union due their habit of popping out of nowhere in the middle of the night, gunning or bombing down everyone and everything they saw and run away. During World War II the Italians infiltrated the American embassy at Rome as soon as they heard of Pearl Harbor to steal the American diplomatic codes before the local copies were destroyed, with a radio interception unit giving Rommel an edge due a very talkative American military aide at Alexandria (part of the reason Rommel lost at El Alamein was that the British found out, kicked the military aide out of Egypt and had the Americans change all their codes at once). The Italian Navy during both World Wars had a nasty habit of torpedoing or mining enemy ships in harbour (the Austrians during World War I didn't suffer damage as they knew about Italians loving to fight dirty and were prepared. The Royal Navy didn't expect that, and lost two battleships, a tanker and a destroyer, the latter as collateral damage, in a single raid before wising up) and arming patrol motorboats with torpedoes (they sank the Austrian flagship after stumbling on it, with another Austrian ship filming what had happened). Oh, and that part about dropping bombs from air being originally a war crime? The Italians pionereed the art of bombing enemy troops while knowing that.
  • One weird subversion was in the great Truk raid preceding the Marianas Campaign. After the striking power of Japan's Truk base had been eliminated and a pitiful convoy was fleeing, Admiral Spruance of all people took off after them personally in a battleship like a wet-behind-the-ears Ensign starving for glory even ordering bombers away so he could have his kill. No logical explanation seems to have been given other then that Spruance thought he had achieved enough dominance in the battle area to indulge a little sentiment.
  • Themistocles in Ancient Athens was not only a Combat Pragmatist but a shining example of a Sleazy Politician. He was perfectly willing to trample the reputation of rivals by rumor mongering in a way fammmiliar to modern Westerners. From the martial (or the "minervan" to reference the goddess of Athens known for smart fighting) point of view, Themistocles turned away from the tradition of bronze clad hoplites killing each other on foot in a manly manner armed with gear they had paid for. He thought that kind of thing was still all very well in its place but had to be augmented for an enemy like the Persians with the Middle Eastern style of bureaucratized warfare. So he used a lucky silver strike to buy a fleet. The trick? A fleet costs gobs of money-but when you have gobs of money you can spend it on anything you want which is less true about olive farms. Not only that but it could utilize the landless simply by putting them on an oar. This became a force multiplier because it made all of Athen's citizens, and even hired foreigners military assets. Finally it was an operational force multiplier because once sea control was gained (a bit of a bother as Phoenicians and Medized Greeks were no slouches) the Persian army ashore was trapped with a limited amount of supplies. While the Greeks could cruise all around the Eastern Mediterenean, pillaging, supporting would-be rebels, and basically just making trouble.
  • Combat Pragmatism was the cause of a lot of social changes in US history. As manpower has to be gotten somehow an appeal has to be made to minorities. And while discrimination often persisted it had to be downplayed to attract recruits and get them to fight well. Even the Confederacy discussed freeing and recruiting slaves on the grounds that they A) disliked invaders more than they disliked slavery (not likely but an interesting wager) and B) that they were willing to fight over the issue (probably delusional). Of course by that point the South was at a point that they might as well play with highly improbable ideas. In the meantime the North had been recruiting fugitive slaves for a long time as aside from providing extra manpower it was great propaganda.

Martial Arts

  • One of the better examples is a Self-Defense class. Since other forms of martial arts are either done for discipline or fitness, they tend to be much more elaborate. Since self-defense classes are done simply to save your life, they prune away all the extra bits and basically boil it down to "Kick them in the crotch/poke them in the eye and run the hell away."
  • Major William E. Fairbairn. Taught, among other things, sentry elimination to commandos. See the quotes page.
    • By the way the combat style he invented was learned as a cop on the streets of Shanghai. Figure the rest out.
    • As in similar examples, Fairbairn was teaching boys who used Good Old Fisticuffs for status-sorting how to kill (and of course girls who had their own ways of status sorting). His methods were disliked because they simply did not belong in a schoolyard.
  • Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi probably would have used a gun if he had one available and the other guy didn't. "Fight FAIR!" is never really emphasized in his book.
    • He'd have been willing to use a gun as though it were surprising. History shows that Samurai generally were pretty pragmatic on this and many other points.
    • He killed people in sword duels. Other traditional samurai weapons like spears, naginata, longbows, armies of particularly disgruntled and dishonorable peasants, rifles and ninja weren't really appropriate. People ended up dead because he was incredibly Badass.
      • Read his book. Any weapon was appropriate; being limited to swords is the only thing that wasn't. "Bows, guns [they did have them then], spears and halberds are all warriors' equipment." Specifically, "from inside fortifications, the gun has no equal among weapons. It is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once swords are crossed the gun becomes useless." They weren't very good at that time.
      • You hear about how Musashi deliberately showed up late to his duel with Kojiro? in order to psychologically unnerve him? People are still debating whether or not, in doing so, Musashi "cheated."
      • The legend goes that he not only showed up late, but came with a wooden sword and looked about as well-kept as a hobo. This made Kojiro so mad he began screaming out insults, which Musashi just laughed at. This continued to piss off Kojiro so much that he blindly charged at Musashi, who proceeded to knock him down and kill him with a blow to the ribs. Kojiro's supporters--watching the fight--were so incensed that they tried to kill Musashi for his dishonorable conduct right there and then, forcing Musashi to run for his life.
      • Which, some say, could be the actual reason Musashi showed up to the duel late: Had Musashi come at sunrise as was agreed, the unfavorable tide would have prevented him from beating a hasty retreat on his boat, which he used to escape Kojiro's supporters. At sunset, however, the tide was going out, thus giving Musashi his means of escaping having to fight a very dire battle.
    • His first kill was at the age of 13, when he signed up for a duel with a swordsman who came to the local village looking for duels. When his uncle found out, he arranged to formally apologize to the swordsman for wasting his time. As said uncle was apologizing, the young Musashi charged him with a bo (also called a quarterstaff or "a 6-foot-long stick"), knocked him to the ground, dazed him with a blow to the head, and then beat him to death. That is not how duels are typically supposed to go.
  • Suio-ryu kusarigama-jutsu, which is focussed on the sickle and chain ("kusarigama") includes one very memorable technique in its curriculum: facing a sword-wielding opponent, the kusarigama-ka first uses the chain to ensnare him and then (in contrast to the usual technique of giving the killing blow with the sickle) draws the enemy's own short sword from its sheath and stabs him to death with it.
  • Believe it or not, Bruce Lee. His personally-developed fighting-style, Jeet Kune Do, is based on the philosophy of doing 'whatever it takes' to win. In one apocryphal case, during a sparring-match, he was pinned by a judo practitioner who asked what he'd do if this was a real fight. He responded, "Bite you, of course." Basically, he acknowledges that, if you're fighting for real, you use everything at your disposal, including crotch kicks, eye-gouges, hair-pulling and biting. Of course, he was also perfectly capable of fighting 'by the rules' for martial-arts tournaments and movies, but that's another matter.
    • Bruce Lee was actually quite the combat pragmatist and was never shy about how he felt about martial arts skills vs. guns, and even asked a few times if he could use one in his movies. Let's be perfectly clear here, given the choice between showing off his well-earned skills and shooting someone in a real fight, one of the greatest martial arts masters of all time would opt for the gun.
    • There exist numerous martial arts systems in real life based on similar precepts - MCMAP (developed for the Marines), Krav Maga (Israeli Mossad), Systema (KGB), and Kajukenbo for some examples. Even Karate - hardly a new martial art - includes eye-gouging, a multitude of groin attacks, ear rips (it's as painful as it sounds) and even pinching the inner thigh.
    • Ninjutsu is a lot like this. For all the talk of ninjas, it's often forgotten that ninjutsu means not being seen, and, if you are seen, coming up with a way to get away quickly. There's a lot of emphasis on blinding one's opponent. Unlike Samurai Ninjas didn't give a crap about honour (and also unlike Samurai Ninjas often made their Katana shorter or broke weapons down to use them as tools) and while a Samurai would probably wait for you if you couldn't draw your sword, a Ninja would kill you without hesitation. Kicking people in the crotch or throwing sand in the eyes was also part of their fighting-style.
      • Shinobi also trained with pretty much every weapon and even used their own body as a weapon by making the body tougher with various exercises like kicking or punching a tree. This was supposed to be unpleasant, but not painful and of course you need enough time to relax and regenerate.
      • Also completely inverted by police and (to a lesser extent) military combat programmes, where your own survival is not the priority and therefore dirty fighting is usually discarded (it's more useful for staying alive than "honourable" fighting, but improvisation is generally less effective at hurting or subduing the enemy).
      • This appears to be a Cyclic Trope. During dangerous times fighters develop brutally effective fighting styles, then peaceful times come. During peaceful times the fighting styles start to become more showy and flashy, more to make an artful scene than to harm an opponent. Dangerous times return and new fighters develop new styles by taking the old styles and cutting-out all the Kruft. This scales up to whole armies, some of which have been much better at looking good in parades than winning battles.
  • A particular subversion is also often found in martial arts: the most effective fighters are the ones who get to spend the most time training, which means that fighting styles exclusively consisting of crushed throats and gouged eyes will not produce very many fighters who actually know how to even apply the moves, or what will (or probably won't) happen when they try. Fighting styles with a heavy emphasis on decidedly non-lethal and even non-damaging techniques, such as Judo, can be practised to perfection with live, resisting opponents before betting one's life on them.
    • It's not as if sport martial artists are unaware of cheap shots and dirty tricks. Fridge Logic would dictate that there is a damned good reason why such events have rules in the first place.
  • A longtime boxing legend was that Mickey Walker, a champion at welterweight and middleweight, pulled this on Harry Greb, a middleweight champion many experts pick as one of history's greatest boxers. After losing to Greb in a championship bout, the two bumped into each other later in a bar. They drank together for awhile until Walker made some comments about Greb's dirty and unsportsmanlike conduct in the ring, which Greb countered by offering to fight for real outside. The original story goes that while the two were standing in the street Walker waited until Greb was tied up in taking off his jacket and vest, and then hit Greb with a monster shot while Greb was constrained. This version of events was repeated for a long time, until about 30 years later Walker, then a painter long since retired from the sport, admitted that it was a wild exaggeration of events, and the fight was stopped before it started when a bystander separated the two.
  • In a Pankration Tournament, Frank Shamrock was fighting Bas Rutten. In that tournament, anyone hitting their opponent in the face was docked points. Frank's answer in a hold he couldn't escape? Keep making faces at Bas until Bas couldn't resist anymore and hits him.
    • Frank fought Bas in a Pancrase match, which was a shoot form of Japanese pro wrestling (unscripted, no predetermined endings, essentially MMA) where it was illegal to punch someone in the head with a closed fist. Open handed strikes were allowed. Frank made faces to annoy Bas but it was not done in order to force Bas into breaking the rules, which Bas did not.
    • Bas himself knows a thing (or twenty) about fighting dirty.
  • Then there are the Very-Not-Combat sports which almost anything is done when the ref isn't looking. Water polo gets really bad as half the game is just acting--you "draw a foul" and "draw an ejection" even when you weren't being hurt, and if you *are* getting hurt the ref probably won't call it because that would be "rewarding" you for not being able to play. At least, that's what the refs from California and Canada do.
  • To quote a Karate instructor: "No, we don't practice roundhouse kicks as defense. We do them so we can learn how to respond to them if someone does it to you, but as actual self-defense? Would you punch someone in the foot? Sounds silly, doesn't it? So why would you kick someone in the face? Just punch them in the face, your hands are closer."
  • In tae kwon do, there are many kicks, but when one actually spars, most of the fancier kicks are left alone. In fact, most of the kicks would be simply to get the opponent to move farther away when they're close enough to punch you so that you can punch them instead. Punches to the head are considered illegal moves in tournament sparring, but in normal sparring, they are better because it's harder to block punches to the head.
    • To give a good idea of what we're talking about, in a typical non-tournament rules spare in Tae Kwon Do, a person will only use 3 different kicks: a round, or roundhouse, kick (used to set up combinations), a front snap kick (used to push opponents away, or slip between a guard) and a side kick (a powerful kick used at the end of combinations) and that's it. Where Tae Kwon Do kicks are useful is when multiple of them are thrown without putting one's leg down. In other words that "impractical" roundhouse kick mentioned above becomes far more practical when hit with many of them, at fast speeds, from multiple angles.
    • Practical use of Tae Kwon Do (like in a situation where you could really get killed) utilizes kicks to the knees (which will snap the kneecap) and the side kick listed above (which delivers a strong blow after said kneecap has been snapped). In other words kicks are best used in quick combinations of 2 or 3. Not extremely pretty but it will keep you alive.
  • Goju-ryu karate practices many kicks, but in an actual fight, there's only one. All the kicks begin with the same move: bringing the knee forcefully to crotch height.
  • Fencing. Yes, fencing. The 'honorable' stuff on a strip with handshakes and salutes is a sport. Its origin is amongst highwaymen and cutthroats who used grabs, pulls, concealed weapons, kicks, and the like to win. Even historical fencing is a cleaned-up game.
    • Fencing masters of the time emphasize there's nothing dishonorable in running away from multiple opponents, advise on kicks to the balls, and begin lectures on grappling by "break his arm and proceed to grappling".
      • Classically, fencing was so heavily oriented toward dirty fighting, that it was considered taboo in polite society to seek lessons. Doing so was considered an admission that you were up to no good. Matters eventually reached the point that complimenting a social rival's fencing skill was a dire insult, as you'd basically just called him a dirty, underhanded scoundrel.
      • Makes one wonder how many duels were fought over that.
    • A tale from Amberger's Secret History of the Sword vividly demonstrates this trope: an older fencing master is challenged to a duel in a bar by a younger, faster, stronger man with more balls than brains. He agrees to a one-on-one duel in a back alley, just the two of them, mano a mano. When the younger man shows up, the old guy points to the alley entrance and complains that the young guy broke the rules by bringing friends: when the kid turns around to look, the fencing master takes his head off from behind. The fencing master then goes back to the tavern, picks up his beer, and tells the other bar patrons he taught the younger man a lesson he won't soon forget. . .
    • Similarly, the handbook by fifteenth-century master Hans Talhoffer contains advice on how to (amongst other things) boot your opponent in the gut, snatch his sword off him, pull a dagger as a surprise weapon and how to stab or slice a man from behind.
  • Ask any decent fencer about fakes. Fencers are often taught how to fake openings in order to draw the opponent in. Any higher level opponent has the ability to feint at the drop of a hat. In addition to fakes, sometimes with electric scoring, one or both fencers assume that a touch has been scored without the box going off. In this case, the first person to realize it might go for their opponent to catch them unaware. Granted, some fencers are quite honorable about the whole thing and will let you flounder around in confusion for a bit without going for the easy touch. The others think/are trained to believe that you damn well deserve that touch and will go for it the minute you turn your back.
  • Predating the above example is German longsword fencing. The core texts and commentaries thereof are mostly concerned with fighting sans armour, but still include large sections concerning grapples and other tricks despite the deadliness of the two-handed longswords featured. Furthermore, the sword techniques themselves are often based around deception as are the motor techniques used to employ them.
    • One example is simply launching a strike. Most users of a longsword would tip their sword to ninety degree and then swing to complete a horizontal strike. A German swordsman extends their hands first and only alters the angle of the blade at the last possible moment. This way, his adversary has no clue which strike is actually being employed, or otherwise believes themselves to be on the receiving end of an overhead strike.
    • This doesn't even mention the armoured fighting techniques, which are almost entirely based on dirty fighting. They even talk about inverting one's sword to act as a staff/mace hybrid with grabbing on blade and stiking with crossguard.
      • This technique is called Mordhau (murder-stroke). It is explicitly forbidden in the SCA Marshall's Handbook.
    • Modern Western martial artists who are attempting to recreate realistic longsword fighting (based on what documentation exists, as well as learning from experience) not only use the sword as a mace, but one style involves keeping one hand holding the blade almost all the time. This allows the sword to be used in a huge variety of ways. One or two hands on the handle and it's a sword. Let go of the handle and it's a mace. One hand on the blade and the other on the handle and it's a short staff. Hold the blade with both hands and use the crossguard as a hook to snag a shield or the opponent's sword and move it out of the way, and so on.
  • This anti-bullying video promotes this trope.
    • So does any self-defence class. Once you have to fight, fight dirty.
  • Krav maga excels at this.
    • A good portion of martial arts have this in them somewhere. Many disarms involve breaking the gunman's finger to get the weapon away from him, and Savate includes an alarming number of kicks to the liver.
  • This video of a Vale Tudo fight between Gary Goodridge and Pedro Otavio. Cracked.com's Seanbaby best described it with this quote: "Gary Goodridge was finding more uses for a human dick than I did during two years of puberty. And I grew up on a farm." Goodridge, incidentally, had complained before the match that two of his favorite techniques, biting and eyegouging, were banned.
    • Goodridge won that match by decision. That match also held quite a bit of responsibility for the end of the "no rules" days in MMA.
  • This poster on the Jeet Kune Do Talk forum used one of the grossest and embarrassing but effective Improvised Weapon ever when he was attacked while using the urinal: his own piss.
  • Capoeira. Depending on who you learn it from, Capoeira can encompass anything from the standard showy but slow acrobatics, sweeps and kicks to slapping opponents' ears to disorient them, headbutts to the groan, concealed weaponry, tackles, takedowns, and more. "Cheapshots" just before a match proper aren't unheard of from savvy Capoeiristas who see an opponent without his guard up at all times.

Other Forms of Combat

  • Humanity's advancement is a decent amount of testament to this trope, honestly. If there's no way you can kill a larger animal with your bare hands, use a sharp rock. When your opponents are using sharp rocks, lash a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear. When your opponents are using spears, throw the spear, making it a javelin. When your opponents are using javelins, attach feathers and shoot them out of a bow, making them arrows. And so on...
  • Many, many times in nature. Its rare to see an "even" fight between two animals bent on killing each other. Often, a predator will use ambush tactics or superiority in numbers, with some smarter animals taking advantage of their environments. Prey animals meanwhile will often counter this with their own advantages in numbers, or develop self-defense mechanisms such as eating poisonous plants or animals and letting the poison build up in their bodies so that when they are eaten the predator becomes violently ill or even dies.
  • Politics is full of insult, blackmail, and what not. Ever wonder why people assume all politicians are Sleazy Politician?
    • That is just the politics of civilized states where there is a such thing as rule of law and orderly succession. In autocracies when there is not the comparatively honorable civil warfare, there are assassinations, mutilations, and tortures to decide who will rule. And that does not exclude ones close kin.
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