You reframed the question quite well, I think, and I'm not disagreeing with you.
What concerns me, and it's really a low-level concern, is that the military is a hierarchical organization by definition and its reaction time to trends in thinking is almost constrained by the hierarchical nature of the institution. Yet you're being asked to do tasks, as you rightly point out, in Afghanistan and other places that require some very creative thinking as to how to do them. I don't even argue with your point on the rules of engagement and things of nature. I absolutely agree with you.
When you get to both officer class and enlisted folks, what concerns me is how that thinking, that encouragement to be creative, is working with the attention to routine and almost mindless stuff that seems at times to occupy way too much time.