Question 068: Why spend so much time on perfecting basics

Why don’t we fight the way we practice our forms? Why learn all these traditional stances, chambering, reaching for blocks, etc. when in the end we fight like a kick boxer...if we fight like them why don’t we train like them? I feel frustrated because I try so hard to remember to chamber and to reach correctly. Is this because the forms practiced in ITF Taekwondo can not really be directly applied in a self defense situation