I'd prefer to describe it as slashing a dead horse's rotten corpse with a katana. As the bloat and flesh of the ecosystem has disintegrated we're able to observe the framework more clearly - the bone structure of the horse, if you will. Using the katana we are making precise, incisive blows to the remnants as we extract meaning from it's corpse - or lessons learned, if you will.

...perhaps I'm taking the analogy too far?