The recent relationship between military might restrained by "ROE" will have to go. It has been an abject failure, and one of the main reasons we failed in Iraq. We could only stay for so long watching an insurgency grow, hiding behind ROE before we lost the support of the local law abiding population surely? If we want to win, we have to relearn how to fight dirty.
Agree. I wouldn't phrase it as "fight dirty" though - I would say apply the appropriate Principle of War, namely "offensive action". We didn't do that in TELIC post-2003 and we haven't done it effectively in HERRICK post-2001. This represents a misuse of military forces, which should not just be plonked passively in hostile territory to be rocketed and shot at. The Libya campaign showed a good deal more strategic aggression and was militarily more successful, not to mention shorter!
While I'm on Clausewitz it's pretty obvious that "selection and maintenance of the aim" was not performed in either TELIC or HERRICK. I'm pretty convinced that senior Army leaders, rather than politicians, were to blame in both instances. Their intention was undoubtedly to carve out a role for a larger proportion of the Army than had been involved in the initial stages of both operations; the end result was perceived failure and the need for large numbers of regular (as opposed to SF) troops being questioned, making them an easy target in SDSR 2010 cuts. The law of unintended consequences...