Even if I probably didn’t:
Gen. James L. Jones perceived a problem with Marines’ fighting image when he became Marine Corps commandant in 1999. As a young officer during the Vietnam War, he had heard that the North Vietnamese were more fearful of the Republic of Korea’s marines than they were of his U.S. Marines. A rumor had spread among the communists that all Korean marines knew tae kwon do.
Gen. Jones decided that the Marine Corps would develop its own martial-arts program, in part so that the enemy would know that American Marines are as adept at fighting with their hands and feet as they are with rifles and mortars. In 1999, he turned to the director of the Marine Corps’ training and education division — Major Gen. Thomas S. Jones (no relation) — to start a fighting school.
Three years earlier, the previous commandant had been at my house and was torn between giving me a hard time about my earring – a longstanding tradition – and giving Spacebunny a hard time about her belly ring. After the usual liturgy about manhood, the Marines and how my failure to join the latter was indicative of the questionable nature of the former, I pointed out that while there was no doubting his ability to convince thousands of men to do his dirty work, the classical and historical definition of manhood revolved around single combat, and the point of his thrust was entirely ironic because he couldn’t dream of taking me on his best day, even if he had the benefit of the full flush of his youth.
Hoist on his own petard, the general explained that the USMC was not only the finest military force in history, but also trained its warriors in the most deadly hand-to-hand techniques, techniques that would be far too dangerous in displaying to a presumably fragile civilian. I expressed a degree of doubt that there were any lethal techniques taught in six weeks of Basic which would be unfamiliar to anyone having been through five years of full-contact martial arts, including shorin ryu karate, wing chun kung fu and kali.
It was mutually agreed that there was only one way to settle the matter. About fifteen seconds later, the commandant saw fit to reconsider and deem my point to be a worthy one, inasmuch his nose was threatened with becoming intimately familiar with the wooden floor and his movement was arrested by a neck-lock that required only six or eight inches of movement to become a neck-snap. Whereupon I released him and we shook hands.
It is no exaggeration to say that the commandant was not only a brilliant soldier, but he is one of the best of men, and I like to think that if General Jones ever happened to ask his opinion about the utility of the martial arts for the Corps, he might have smiled to himself before affirming that, yes, he could see where such training might be of some small use.