The military is always a poor analogy for anything else. Its the one place in American-actually everywhere, that the subordinates, especially the young privates and corporals, must robotically follow orders based either confidence their officers and sergeants are right or fear of not following orders and disagreement may cause otherwise unnecessary casualties. You need to fear the consequences of disobedience. No rational, independent thinking person is likely to charge a pill box or entrenchment if they stopped to think about it so any instinct to stop and think about it has to be distilled from the individual soldiers thought process.
Ghost, I especially like your comment on guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare, insurgencies or, as they were known until Vietnam "small wars" are inherently destructive, as you say, because the enemy hides their distinction from civilians. So a raghead that sells you coffee during the day might be on the fire line trying to kill you during an ambush that night. Put anti-air weapons in the parking lot of a mosque, or even on top of or in the mosque if its sufficiently large, does not give the guerilla's enemy any choice but to obliterate the threat, cuz the non guerilla combatant has no obligation to allow themselves to be killed.
Also, Ghost, do you ever talk military on any of the various online military history websites?
The metaphor to military life is overused in sports. No one is going to get killed obviously. But the goal is to win as a team not achieve individual fame, that's what tennis and golf are for, so there isn't much room for individual thinking when it comes to the team. Everything a player does reflects on the team, whether its a team activity or not. Publicity is a harsh bright and usually unfair light hence the need for less individualism off the field and out of the locker room.