Stap me! I thought I over-simplified......
"......the fast(ish), low-level, quick turnaround concept for operations against a heavily armed opposition for 30 years and now suddenly it isn't suitable against small-arms equipped militia?"
Surely the point about low level in C Europe in the Cold War is that:
1) The air threat and sophisticated SAM threat made low level SAFER than medium level, surely? With no air- and double-digit SAM threat, medium altitude offers sanctuary, and low level becomes RELATIVELY more dangerous.
2) We had bigger force structures, and the conventional elements were not expected to sustain ops for long - blunting an enemy offensive enough to give pause for thought, buying thinking time before escalation,etc. But expected to operate for days, not months, and thus able to sustain higher loss rates.
3) In a real war, acceptable loss rates are determined logically, by the military itself, and the public trust the military to know best. In limited and peace-keeping ops the attitude of the public to seeing the C-17s off-loading coffins is critical, acceptable loss rates are effectively determined by the politicians and the voters, and a much lower level of losses is deemed acceptable.
One of the most interesting aspects of the major's e-mail was his comment about R&R and leave hampering his ability to conduct operations. Because the politicians are desparate to portray current ops in Afghanistan and Iraq as relatively low intensity 'peace-keeping' and reconstruction efforts, we don't have a "wartime attitude" to things like R&R and leave, nor to getting adequate force levels.