Soldiers are not diplomats. Soldiers do fight and kill their way to operational success and/or gain that success by being capable or threatening to do so.
In Special Forces we strive to full fill the role of Warrior, diplomat and teacher as required to accomplish the mission. Part of the reason we did so poorly in Iraq initially is because many in the conventional Army failed to grasp that were in a diplomatic role where they had to negotiate with local leaders to gain situational awareness and to co-opt support.

Soldiers on point in this type of irregular warfare environment cannot define their role as strictly being a warrior unless we want to lose this fight. There is no one else to perform that role outside the capital. That American Soldier may be the only American that a local sees in a remote village, and the dialouge between them is as important as the shooting war in IW.

Victory does not from building local institutions.
One of the criticisms directed at the U.S. military is that we confuse combat with strategy. Our entire Network Warfare concept is based on seeing first and acting first, which is great for combat, but it doesn't come close to looking like a strategy to win the war. We defeated both the Taliban/AQ and Saddam's conventional like forces in battle, but we're still far from a strategic victory. If a strategic victory is obtainable, it is going to be obtained through building viable host nation institutions, not institutions that parallel the American Government structure, but whatever works in the area we're fighting in.

William, I think you're doubling back on your previous argument where you stated we don't need irregular warfare doctrine, we just need to learn to fight wars better (loosely paraphrased). I agreed to some extent, but your argument in my opinion proves why we do an IW doctrine/concept whatever to provide some sort of organizing structure for winning these conflicts. Unlike many who swallow the indirect approach and peace corps with rifle b.s. to the extreme, I agree ultimately we have to kill/capture or co-opt the insurgents, but to that we have to engage the local population and win their support to some extent to find them.