I have a question for rick: what makes you think the insurgents have no generals? The various groups definitely have top leadership which would qualify for the world general and these men do help coordinate attacks across the country. Besides that we're talking about asymmetrical warfare which means what works for one side will not work for the other. A looser chain of command might work well for insurgents but horribly for those fighting them for a variety of reasons (from logistics to rules of engagement to the need to implement COIN strategy).
Finally, you should probably consider that US military strategy tends to be based off the originally German idea of "mission tactics," which tends to emphasize flexibility and freedom of action on the lower ranks after having been given an objective but the higher ups. So non-coms already have a high degree of autonomy especially in combat.
As for joe's idea of just using special ops, no its not intelligence it is the kind of tactics that we've been using. Targeted killing of insurgents and insurgent leaders has been the order of the day since US troops arrived in the country. Special forces, aircraft, and predator drones are being and have been used. But that's not an effective means of fighting insurgency. The point of counter-insurgency is not to kill the enemy, it is to secure the populace and secure territory. These tactics have helped defeat or at least bring under control insurgencies in numerous instances from the Second Boer War (probably the original COIN strategy though a bit more brutal than modern versions), to Sri Lanka (after two decades of joe's "just kill the insurgents plan" having no results they finally switched to COIN and within a few years crushed the Tamil independence movement), to Iraq (where Petraeus' COIN strategy yield huge dividends in increasing security though the Iraqis will probably have to work a few more years before the insurgency finally dies out). To do COIN you need lots of troops and special forces, while good in any number of ways, are designed to do the kind of day-to-day ground holding and security work needed for COIN, nor are there enough of them.