I highly recommend reading Jocko Willink's book to get an understanding of these conflicts.

This guy makes it sound like the war is a mess akin to the fast pace of Battlefield 3 multiplayer and it couldn't be further from the truth. The US armed forces go to some pretty extraordinary lengths before dropping a bomb - for starters they give prior notification to the residents before any area is considered combat zone.
Imagine fighting a war, where you are constantly being open about where you are going to strike, it seems insane. But they do this to minimize civilian casualties as a priority over destroying targets.