I think budo is not equal to fighting arts. Overlapping in manifestation, but not equal. Katherine brought up a point, tangent to the question of the thread, but part of my perspective - I believe that budo (that we know today) was a system to help the fighting class normalize into a civilian population - an outlet to apply their knowledge and skill to other aspects of society:
https://youtu.be/TS21wcdpgUg
Fighting systems are about the capitulation/domination of human capital. Budo is a system to apply an ethical code to training and tactics. You fight how you train, so implementing the system at the training level is arguably an adequate point of origin for an ethics code. We all want to believe that our "superior" fighting skill will be wielded with a moral compass that points straight to "above reproach." Find me the thread on Aikiweb that outlines a fight-scenario that has the aikido person wearing a black hat. Unless it's someone with bad energy...
First, you have to be able to
do something. The fighting arts side of budo empowers you to
do. The ethics side of budo empowers you to apply a morality to what you do. If you cannot throw your partner, what difference does it makes as to why you would [try to] throw them? I think sometimes we jump into the
why without checking to see if we
can. This was my point from my earlier post - the work of changing our bodies to fight is the predecessor of choosing how to apply that skill.
As a side note, it ain't like other cultures didn't apply a morality to their fighting classes. The Chinese did it, the Romans did it, the Europeans did it...