The history and effectiveness of American Snipers goes back to the French and Indian War to the Rev. War, the War of 1812 to the present.
The cost effectiveness and strategic effectiveness of the sniper is what scares many of the multi starred brass of the Army and Marine Corp and now the Navy with snipers in the Seal ranks.
They kill the enemy in the most cost effective manner. Also, by targeting enemy officers and lead NCO's, they devastate the enemies command structure. Our guys in combat continue to fight when their commanders get taken out in combat. Often our enemies will surrender in mass when their tyranical commanders get taken out or they retreat in mass.
Our new space age snipers will be the remote controlled UMV's with the ability to spot the enemy leaders and take them out with rockets fired hundreds or thousands of miles away. They, too, after this war on terrorism will become despised by the brass and those who depend on strong enemies being alive to make their living.
If the Jag Off lawyer had not prevent the taking out of Omar in the early days of the Afghanistan war, the war in Afghanistan would have been over even faster.
The Islamic thugs who are in command present tremendous targets of opportunity. In Iran if the top 100 Mullahs and top 100 Iran military were taken out by Predator UMV's and snipers. That would be it for the Islamic thugs in control. The war would be over before it started. If that happened, even Saddam might just surrender.
Perhaps the brass themselves are threatened at a personal level by effective snipers. I've wondered about that before. In any conflict, aren't Command & Control always targets? Hmmm.