John J. says:

Why hasn't anyone remarked that while we have been fighting Al-Quida and the Taliban, our principle enemy in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been IRAN.

Most of our casualties in both of these wars have been from Iranian provided or engineered IEDs.

They have been at war with us for many years, but we have yet to declare war on them.

How can our troops be expected to win if we refuse to directly fight our main enemy in Southwest Asia?

Instead we keep on trying to negotiate with them, while refusing to take their consistent NO for an answer. The only reason they even bother to "negotiate" with us at all is simply to stall, while their centrifuges merrily spin up enough highly enriched...

ROE in Afghanistan
This looks to me like a no-win situation.
Gen. McCrystal, having been promoted and appointed by President Obama, is a can-do type of guy. His best strategy would be to resign, but he is too proud to do that. Don't forget that his area of expertise was counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency.
As for Gen. Petreaus, who so famously wrote the book on counterinsurgency before applying it in Iraq; I believe that he may be making the same old mistake of "fighting the last war". Afghanistan is NOT Iraq, and the tactics which seem (remember, it's not over yet) to have worked there may not be anywhere near as effective in a totally different situation.
As for the importance of denying Al-Quida a sanctuary in...