This may be the age of precision airstrikes and satellite supremacy, but much of modern warfare is still up to the grunts on the ground. They have always been the Army’s heavy lifters — the riflemen and machine-gunners; the squad and platoon leaders who bear the burdens of long-term combat. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are demonstrating, again, that all the latest gee-whiz firepower in the world will never fully replace the enduring value of boots on the ground. Symbolic case in point: The Pentagon’s "decapitation strike" of stealth bombers and cruise missiles launched to kill Saddam Hussein as...