Before this thing gets locked due to the inability of some people to keep things civil.
First, that doesn't sound like a "young twenty something"...close to 30 maybe 28-29...and he is definitely gung ho.
You have to look at these events from the military ground personnel perspective. They are fighting an unknown enemy where any person moving is a potential threat, every vehicle is a bomb, every cell phone is a remote triggering device...even with technological superiority we still lose men on the ground because some young person who doesn't understand the value of life gets talked into walking into a crowded marketplace or police station with a bomb strapped to his chest to blow everyone around him up...the same ignorant goat herding psychopaths who brain wash people into being suicide bombers, plant bombs in cars, inside dead bodies, next to schools, mosques, and anywhere else they can inflict casualties...and it's all for psychological effect. Kill enough people for whatever reason you can call a "just cause" and someone will take notice.
What really puzzles me is that these yellow bellied goat herding terrorist leaders kill more innocent people in a day than the soldiers do in a month...yet the pacifist world wants to condemn the soldiers for their actions...and it was happening around the world before the war...tell those goat herding cave dwellers who are brain washing young people to come out and fight like real men, away from the homes of innocent women and children.