I like the William Tecumseh Sherman model, just do what you have to do to break the enemy’s will and the war will be over with a lot less bloodshed and suffering to civilians than letting terrorists hide in schools and hospitals. Make the enemy howl and there’ll be no need to hamstring our military trying to win hearts and minds. Sorry, that’s never worked.
At some point a reasonable person has to stop worrying about these people’s hearts and minds, and become willing to settle for their asses...
The "hearts and minds" of which you speak is actually the only way you will ever "win" a small war. Doing what you suggest as "doing what you need to do to break the enemy's will" only generates more hatred and hard feelings against your force, in addition to handing the enemy an info-war victory that they hold up against you.
Winning the support of the population is a critical component of any small war, without their support you have no inside knowledge of the opposition organization, you don't know who the bad guys even are until they point a gun at you, in other words, its one of your foundation points in your COIN strategy.
Believe it or not, it works. There are plenty of Afghans who are helping us over there, they tell us where the IED's are, they tell us when groups of bad guys are moving through the hills to infiltrate, obviously we don't get them all, but we do get quite a lot, however they are getting discouraged with the lack of progress, the Taliban seems to be gaining the momentum and that hurts us.
Part of the reason I think we haven't "won" there yet is that we haven't finished the job. Back in 2007 we were fighting aggressively in Helmand, the Taliban was on the run, then we backed off, we gave them breathing room to regroup and re-arm and now we're paying the price for it. If we're going to have any chance of peace or security in Afghanistan we need to get back into Helmand in force to finish the job (there is a big difference in legitimate offensive operations and trying to win hearts and minds.
The people there live under Taliban rule, they support them because they have no choice (support us or die), we need to get back down there and crush the fight out of the Taliban, but it'll be bloody, and I don't think there is the political will to do it, which is sad because we might as well not even have gone in if we're not going to finish.