If in training, students feel the need to control their partner’s arms, and to prevent his attack by grasping and pushing, they are not unavailable.  If they were moving in a way that made them unavailable, there would be no need to seize their partner and captivate his movement.  Their need arises precisely from the fact that they areavailable to be struck.  They do not integrate his movement into their plan, and as a result, must attempt to control his movement before they can mount their attack.

Unable or unwilling to execute the principles, they compensate by playing grabby-hands.  They indulge in the delusion that they can grasp and control the hands of a grown man who is already swinging on them—any police officer, bouncer, or psych-ward orderly, can confirm this as a losing strategy.  Even a smaller, weaker opponent can refuse to be controlled.  Prior to the police taser, it usually took multiple officers to restrain a single out-of-control individual without first clubbing him half to death.

Grabby-hands is only effective when its user gets to be the lone uncooperative asshole in a cooperative training environment.  The moment his partner becomes equally uncooperative, Kriegsmeister Grabbyhands gets hit.           

When Senior Master Al was deployed in Afghanistan, he was called on to brief a senior officer on the bizarre disparity between the various services in the number of IED casualties.  Non-Marine convoys were getting rocked every day, and coalition forces were dying.   Operating in the very same areas, the Marine Corps almost never got hit.  When they did get hit, Marines usually survived.  If they suffered casualties, it was primarily from direct fire weapons, not from a roadside bomb on their way to the fight.

Lt Col Al explained that the low casualty rate was due to lessons learned in Anbar Province, Iraq.  So long as Marines believed that their mission was to deter insurgency and maintain normalcy, they were plagued by IEDs, but as insurgency in Anbar escalated into all-out war, their mission became utter destruction of the enemy, and IED deaths dropped from an average of one marine per day to one marine per month.   They underwent a change of spirit, and assumed the spirit of attacking first. 

 

It is difficult to lay waste to your enemy while you are strapped inside 18 tons of rolling armor.  The MRAP—Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle—was fielded by the Marine Corps in 2007, and was engineered to survive the IED blasts that penetrated our Humvees.  The plate windows are high and small, and over an inch thick; the field of view is narrow and dim.  An enemy on foot, armed with an AK, RPG, or remote detonator, will see you before you see him.  He will scurry from window to window, from house to house, in tunnels and trenches, through mouse-holes carved between courtyard enclosures—places your armor cannot follow. 
 

The vehicle’s turret carries a single gunner, armed with a 7.62mm or .50cal machinegun.  For the riflemen, gunports offer limited angles of fire in a single direction.  They cannot shoot up or down or behind.  A side port cannot shoot forward or rearward.  A forward port cannot shoot sideways.

When the enemy is upon you, and you wish to kill him, you must unstrap, open the dual 700lb rear doors or a 400lb side door, and dismount with your team, all while being fired upon. You must find cover from which to shoot and move.  If you use the vehicle as cover, you garrison yourself in the one place the enemy is sure to fire upon.  All this before firing a single rifle shot.  This is the spirit of being attacked.

In Anbar Province, Marine units had a different plan.  They dismounted their vehicles.  They owned the road.    They stalked their enemy.  They bird-dogged him, sought his silhouette in every car window and every doorway.  They sniffed out his hidey holes, and made his safe houses their death traps.  Their vehicle was no longer an armored personnel carrier; it was reconstituted as a bulletproof, bomb resistant, 65 mile an hour raised machinegun turret, increasing the force’s range and firepower and supporting their assault.  This is the spirit of attacking first.

When they spotted an out of place object in their path, an abandoned car, oil drum, donkey carcass, or freshly turned patch of earth, when they saw someone loitering or peaking from behind cover, espying their position like a lookout, they knew they were dealing with an IED, and to keep their distance.  If their vehicle did get hit, they were spread out along the road instead of being a single target.  Armored or not, if a blast is strong enough to roll the MRAP, the occupants are finished; they cannot survive the trauma of being rolled in an 18-ton paint shaker.  Whether they were attached to a Humvee or an MRAP, if they walked the road and got thrown by the blast, they usually survived.  When those righteous killers redeployed to Afghanistan, they brought with them the lessons of Al Anbar.

According to accounts given to Al by several senior officers, what protected Marines from falling prey to IED’s was their choice to descend from their armor and play offence.  One officer concluded: “What we think makes use safe makes us vulnerable.  What we think makes us vulnerable is what makes us safe.”  Al noted that he, like most shooters, removed the plates from his body armor in order to increase his mobility, sometimes keeping the front plate, but never the sides.  He knew that his life depended more on his ability to shoot and move and kill the enemy than on how armored his torso was.  Anything that would slow him down or inhibit his free movement made him a less virtuosic killer, and put his life in danger. 

When you are being overrun, no amount of body armor is going keep you off of the Holy Warriors of Allah Jihad Snuff Film Hour on Al Jazeera; putting lead on target might do the trick. 

Al noted a parallel phenomenon in professional football.  Pro ball players wear a fraction of the padding that college players do.  Professional quarterbacks usually forgo all padding on the arms, hips, and legs, making do with their helmet and breastplate.  Their shoulder pads are minimalist, lest they inhibit their throw.  Next to college or even high school pads, a pro quarterback’s pads look small enough to be donated to little league.  Anything that lessens mobility is discarded, as it will likely get them sacked.  They know that career-ending injuries are orthopedic, and no pad will protect them from a twisted ankle.  The freer their movement, the less likely they are to misstep and injure themselves.  The mindset that values free movement over defensive padding is part of what differentiates a pro ballplayer from the throngs of amateur athletes who covet his position.  This is the spirit of attacking first.

Al recalled that at one point during his deployment, he had to take a fellow officer aside for some straight talk.  In Al’s words, the man was wearing “every piece of protective gear the Marine Corps ever issued.”  In addition to his helmet and vest, and front, back, and side armor plates, he had thick pauldrons on his upper arms like a child’s pool floaties, and a gunner’s kevlar pants covering him to his knees.

“You need to take that stuff off,” Al told him discretely.   When his words didn’t sink in, Al continued, “You’re embarrassing me.”  The officer was broadcasting his fear to the men in his command.  His fear, or at least his response to it, was irrational.  If that armor would have benefitted him, there would have been no shame in it.  But an officer weighing himself down with SWAT pauldrons and kevlar bloomers only decreases his war fighting capability, and in doing so, endangers the lives of the men in his command.  This is the spirit of being attacked.

 

These lessons, which Al brought home from war, concretize the opening of Musashi’s passage: “The spirit of attacking first is completely different from the spirit of being attacked.”  Musashi continues: “Bearing an attack well, with a strong (stance), and parrying the enemy's attack well, is like making a wall of spears and halberds.”

The polearm is the kingly caste of cold weaponry.  Its wielder stands outside the range of swordsmen and axemen, where he strikes with impunity.  As long as he maintains his range, he can remain on the attack.  As long as he remains on the attack, he can maintain his range.  So long as he keeps his range, he needs no shield, as he remains out of reach.  So long as he attacks, his enemy’s shield remains a half measure; he strikes wherever the shield is not. 

The spearman and the halberdier have no need of defense.  Their attack is their defense.  They attack such that they remain unavailable and unavoidable.  They may hook another polearm with the beard of the halberd, or catch a shield with the spear’s quillons, but these movements are not defensive; they breach the enemy’s defense, clearing his weapon and lowering his shield.  Spears and Halberds are offensive weapons.  They are the spirit of attacking first.

When spearmen assume a defensive posture, they huddle together, blades forward, and brace for the enemy.  This may be useful at a given moment, such as meeting a heavy cavalry charge, but if you make the mistake of believing that spear fighting is huddling in a line, you will see your error as you smell your own entrails.  Demoting the spear to the rank of wall beam is trading a true offense for the illusion of defense.

When Kriegsmeister Grabbyhands attempts blocks and holds to suppress his enemy’s attack, he makes a wall of spears and halberds.  His arms cease to be weapons.  He precludes his own offense in pursuit of an ineffective defense.  So long as he is defensive, his enemy can strike with impunity.  Like the spearman and the halberdier, an enemy on the attack will continue to strike him wherever he is unshielded. 

Against a motivated enemy, there is only one effective defense: killing him before he kills you.  Anything less is a half measure.  So long as you leave him the gift of life, a motivated enemy will find a way to overcome every conceivable defense.  Walls built by men can be destroyed by men.  Descend from your walls and disavow the illusion of safety.  Seek out the enemy and destroy him.  Scale his walls and breech his gates.

Fighting the enemy at your walls will not make you safe.  Fighting him at your borders will not make you safe.  Fight the enemy in his living room.  When you win this fight, and your enemy is no more, then and only then can you go home safely and in peace.

This lesson applies to nations and individuals alike.  When you are fighting for your life, there is only one safe position: standing over the perpetrator’s broken corpse.  People who are afraid to close with the enemy and kill him will try to keep him at bay with reaching punches and kicks.  Instead of pursuing their enemy, they erect an imaginary wall around their personal space.

For the moment that they maintain their comfortable sparring range, they cling to the hope of landing a highlight reel knockout.  As soon as the enemy moves into their space—as motivated enemies do—they panic.  They try to block, to grab, to push him away, but all these measures only distract them from the one thing that might save them: closing with the enemy and killing him.  By training with the wrong spirit, these hapless cowards turn their spears into walls.   

Our passage concludes: “When you attack the enemy, your spirit must go to the extent of pulling the stakes out of a wall and using them as spears and halberds.”

In Guided Chaos, our soul objective is killing the enemy in order to preserve ourselves. Walls keep us from our enemies.  They are an impediment to victory, and thus, we renounce them.  Anything that prevents us from killing the enemy puts us in danger.  What would seem to make us safe, makes us vulnerable.

Walls can be breached.  There is always an enemy too large, too strong, too skilled, or too enraged to be controlled.  We close with the enemy such that we are unavailable and unavoidable.  We invade his personal space and move in for the kill.  It is precisely by foregoing all walls, and meeting the enemy where he is most dangerous, that we are able to land our killing blows.  What seems to make us vulnerable makes us safe.

If the enemy tries to advance into our personal space, we do not mount a defense to stop him.  We invite him to our ambush.  If he attacks, we do not waste the use of our limbs trying to stop his attack.  We adapt to his attack and incorporate it into our own.  We relinquish our defenses so that our bodies can become offensive weapons.  We remove all walls, so that our enemy can run to the snare we have laid for him.  This is the spirit of pulling stakes from a wall in order to make spears and halberds.  This is the spirit in which we train, the spirit that seems to make us vulnerable, which in fact, saves us in combat.  
                                                                                       
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