I wasn't in Iraq so I can't speak to that.
> In Afghanistan, through 3-4 different administrations, drone rules of engagement have been a joke.
I can speak to this though, I was in Afghanistan in 2011-2012. It was my job to aid troops in getting drone and air support. Can you be specific about who operated the drones you're mentioning? In the DOD we required three levels of verification to occur; every request started with "troops in contact" which requires that not only are troops engaged, but they have to be able to demonstrate that they cannot move (eg: "we are dead in the water if we sit here.") In the midst of this they had to be able to concisely define the target, usually with a building grid, but also describing the target with orientation (trees, other objects, etc), and third someone like me had to verify all of those facts by feeds, radio, binoculars, or sight on seen to pass order to an Air Officer who would design a proposal, which usually got passed all the way up to regimental office. As far as I know, for CentCom under Mattis this was not unusual - if provably difficult.
With respect to ROE, the ROE in Iraq and Afghanistan were different. The one in Afghanistan required you be shot at in order to engage. This resulted in an abundance of injured or mamed troops, because the way the military does operations require them to blanket and leaflet towns they're going to invade. So yes, the Taliban usually knows you're coming weeks in advance, and the townspeople who aren't Taliban affiliated have left.
That's not to justify, "This area is a free for all", and doesn't sound much like the military I know.
Edit:
I do highly support the idea of boots on the ground over drones. We never had any missed targets that I was aware of and BDAs (battle damage assessments) were always accurate to our desired outcome in my experience. That said, the reliance on drones in areas where we couldn't bring artillery created a real race for resources, which is where you get stories like Dakota Meyers.
Edit:
Last one, I promise.
> Our military has no grounds to complain about people "not respecting" rules of war.
This is junk. War is messy, it's the byproduct of deplomacy breaking down. It's on everyone who has experienced the theater of war to talk about how the rules were or were not applied. Sometimes you may not like the answer that results in an exception, but it's useful for warrior to understand the baseline reality that they will face and expect - I say this on either side, whether you're a US troop or a warrior in the Taliban. These laws come into conflict in complicated ways many times. One classical example:
When I first learned to shoot the M2 (which is a 50 caliber machine gun) I learned you cannot shoot them at people. You can, howver, use them to assault vehicle born targets, targets with necessary distance, targets behind cover, targets using armor, etc... When you have a vehicle loaded down with explosives racing through a winding ingress point, knowing in all likelihood of they succeed that another attack is imminent, do you debate the law of land and warfare or do you zero in on the engine block and let fate take it's course?