Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
What was our Cold War strategy? We "won" right? Yet we killed few people and broke few things.
we didn't have a strategy, we had a policy -- 'containment' -- that was implemented through a large variety of strategies (many varying from each Administration to the next...) and we killed a lot of people and broke a lot of things...

Nor did we win, we got to a qualified draw that left our nominal opponent in bad shape due to his own profligacy. We also seem determined to do the same sort of thing...

"Targeting" the noun is a US misapplication of the word targeting, a verb which itself is misuse of the noun target, a word derived from the Celtic Targe, a round shield.

Long way of saying that targeting can mean different things to different people and a reason to trot out my favorite William F. Halsey quote "Regulations were meant to be intelligently disregarded." Not just Regs, applies even more so to doctrine in general; it's a guide, not a prescription.
""For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. - Sun Tzu""
Sam Griffith has almost as much to answer for as does Robert Strange McNamara. FWIW, Sun Wu, CvC and John Boyd do not have all the answers -- no one does. Hewing overly strongly to the written word causes target fixation and deters flexibility...