[quote]Infantry are useless in the 'War on Terror'. When you're trying to kill key targets, you want to do it quietly in a manner that causes the organization to implode. I seriously wish that instead of deploying infantry to fight an [i]organization and not a nation[/i], we stayed in the shadows and killed them discreetly. Then again, Bin Laden would have died in the nineties had the CIA been able to call their own shots.[/quote] Infantry is needed to create an environment of security within a nation, which is needed when fighting a counter insurgency. Why? This security is the first step towards creating a stable and appealing government, and as we know, the question of an insurgency is one of who should rule.

It's the Middle East. It'll never be stable until the people there choose to make it stable, and obviously, the infantry didn't make it stable. In fact, we'd likely cause less damage by simply neutralizing our enemies in the dark and making them disappear. Although, we'd never have this problem in the first place if we simply didn't have a hard-on for trying to foil Russia's plans in the Middle East.

[quote]It's the Middle East. It'll never be stable until the people there choose to make it stable, and obviously, the infantry didn't make it stable. In fact, we'd likely cause less damage by simply neutralizing our enemies in the dark and making them disappear.[/quote] I'm pretty sure the stabilization of Iraq was due to the infantry presence there, thus allowing for the pacification of the Iraqi sectarian conflicts post 2003 invasion. Not Special Forces, or drones, or even a movement within the peoples themselves.