Don Gwinn:
I am in NO WAY knocking your initiation into TKD. In fact, I want to say "good for you" in the loudest way possible. TKD has many benefits and build excellent attributes, and it seems, from what you write, that you will benefit from them.
My contention has been with the idea that TKD teaches "powerful striking techniques." Obviously that is a relative statement as, naturally, some systems have more powerful striking techniques than others, but in no way was I suggesting that TKD was useless.
One specific point, however:
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The point is, if the big difference is the shin, then when I've mastered the art of throwing a roundhouse with speed, power, accuracy and no telegraph I'll just start throwing them with my shin.
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It wouldn't be enough to just switch later on. For one thing, muscle memory will force you to kick with your foot even if you intend to switch (a problem that I went through when I started Thai) and require quite a bit of unlearning. For another, your shin won't have the same attribute as someone who has callused it through repeated kicks with it. Not everyone can have baseball bats broken over his shin.
LawDog:
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Good point. 40-ton tanks tend to give a bit of an edge against horse-cavalry. However, one tends to opine that the difference is the same as the difference between a muay thai stylist and a man with a scoped .300 magnum at 400 yards. In other words a bit of a non-sequitor in a discussion regarding hand-to-hand combat styles.
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That's why I said "German Grenadiers" as well as tanks. Many historians would argue that Poles would have lost even if they had possessed technological parity because of outdated doctrine (operational technique). The Allies of 1940 arguably had technological parity, if not superiority, and certainly they had numerical superiority, but they still lost due mainly to outdated operational art (again, technique). Techniques do matter, and matter mightily.
Not all "martial arts" are the same. Not all have same techniques. Not all of them are equally effective (particularly in different contexts). They aren't simply the "same thing" with different nomenclature.
A martial art that trains its students to participate in point competitions, form competitions or even highly constrained "full-contact" competitions is unlikely to train its students to effect "powerful" dynamic striking techniques as another that trains its students to survive in a brutal ring match that allows free flowing elbows, knees, punches to the face and kicks to the back of the neck.
Certainly I agree with you that fighting spirit is a sine quo non of any kind of fighting, but a body that is full of spirit, but devoid of physical attributes and techniques would be useless, just as technique that is devoid of any physical attribute (let alone spirit, desire, "combat mindset," etc.) would be useless.
Don Gwinn (again):
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...he and Skor have probably lived in more places around the world than any other 10 TFLers together.
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Only ten?
Skorzeny