...by fire and maneuver. That way is through ensuring you put him on the horns of a dilemma. Call it using combined arms to "fix" him, but the result is the same. You force him to make a choice. Often it is a choice between staying and dying under the effects of HE (40mm, 60mm, 120mm, JDAM, etc.), or fleeing and facing the effects of effective and accurate direct fires.

Take away one ingredient of that recipe, and you cannot maneuver effectively, in the Afghanistan context. There is too much deadspace and terrain (to include the human terrain) that allows the enemy to move along after contact is broken.

Now, this business of close combat also involves the task of deciding if you believe it is important enough to send a troop through the door of a dark, musty mud hut, when you can exercise tactical patience, sit back, and call those knuckleheads out to you because you have them surrounded.

I've used the point made by a former Ranger on another board here before. There is nothing that important, besides an American captive, that justifies assaulting a hut/building over here. Nothing at all.