Agreed. However, the Ruger Gunsite rifle does a pretty good job of blending the two, IMO.
I have a left handed one in .308 and I'm quite fond of it. Took off the scope rail (with true 1x scopes, I believe that the forward scope concept isn't as relevant as it once was), running irons for now. Since the LH version doesn't come with a synthetic stock variant, I may someday get a McMillan HTG stock to throw on it. If you're a righty, they have the OEM Ruger synthetic stock which should be G2G.
The only thing that could really improve the GSR is a Tikka Arctic-style rear sight for it. The OEM rear requires an allen key and adjusting sights is more guesswork than anything. No "clicks" or anything like that, just a 1/8th to 1/4 turn of the key and hoping that's correct.
I also have a SCAR and owned an FAL. I'm not sure on the value of the SCAR yet. I've had 1100 rounds through it, and while it's light and never malfunctioned (except for once, when I had my thumb over the ejection port) I'm not sure it's worth the $3k + price.
edit: is it me, or has the SCAR 17 actually gone up in retail price?
If I were doing this again, I'd get a Springfield Armory imported paratrooper FAL (I think the model is SA 48 or SAR 4800) slap on some BLO-refinished wooden handguards and grips (in an effort to make it "softer" looking to the non-gun folks) and call it good. Grab a bunch of mags (I'd ask over on FALFiles for mag reccomendations), paint the front sight
florescent red, and go run it. No optics, just irons. Similar to this guy here: