ROME provides many valuable lessons. There have been a few since then, such as :

Do not fight a war with multiple fronts.

Do not fight a land war in Asia.

Donuel, you make good points, but you are prone to overstatement. Did not the US achieve victory in World War 2 violating both of your rules?

True this is not a War of State versus State as in the traditional sense. This is like a massive homicide investigation, and as long as the killers are on the loose we are none of us safe. They have forced us to change our way of living, but I believe it is on a short-term basis, as any community would change its behavior if a mass murder were to take place by persons unknown . If we establish a firm objective (establishing guilt in the attack and punishing those guilty), devise a strategy for achieving this (enlist other nations in an effort to gather evidence in the investigation and capture the culprits), and keep our tactical methods flexible to accomodate the unexpected, I believe we can succeed.