[PHP]As Jon Reading states, while it is a part of the martial spectrum, it does not address all aspects of fighting. If this is your goal, then you must bait the hook, put the pole in the water, and then unhook the fish!

Using that analogy, most people that view martial arts as a part of their job are concerned with the baiting the hook...and fishing up until the pull the fish out of the water....that is when the physical fight ends.

Aikido, in this analogy, is concerned at the point the fish is in the boat, how you get it off the hook, and how you deal with it at that point on. It considers the spectrum that happens after the physical, that is the after effects of physical conflict.[/PHP]

Well said.

This was and remains a BIG issue in law enforcement. The reality I encountered catching drugs and aliens in towns where there were many generations of smugglers (perhaps beginning with cattle and horses, guns for Pancho Villa, booze during prohibition and today's contraband), you had to have a strategy for closure.

Sun Tzu said, "always allow an advesary a means of escape".

As the Confucian strategist said, "Never strike a man on an old wound or insult him about a disgrace". At least half of the resistings I encountered after busting someone for contraband, was escalated because they felt their honor was insulted.

I decided to treat the whole thing like a game rather than a moral mission. The smuggler is in business to put food on his table. I was there to stop loads of contraband from entering the country. He was willing to take his chances as long as I did not take his capture or his profession personally. There were agents who did not follow this "way". Their homes were burned to the ground. In one case, an agent turned up dead while off duty.