Good point. Patton wasn’t exactly alone in his observation that war was a grand human endeavor, terrible, but magnificent, reaffirming values, etc. Interestingly enough, the exact same debates were had reference the belt fed machine gun.
There’s an interesting book out there called the social history of the machine gun. Fascinating, but there are leaders who really do like the idea of soldiers moving off in glorious combat.
They aren’t like normal people
That is kind of what I was angling at, I didn't know quite how to word it. But I think we can both understand why it is an odd concept to try to relay.
I am certain that when the longbow first came out, it was branded as cowardly by those who were doing their fighting with the short sword.
The same dynamic applied to the horse calvary in WWI, where they simply got mowed down by machine guns, as is probably addressed in that book you mentioned.
One could also address the American Colonials (and by extension, the indian tribes at the time) who not only fired from behind cover, but aimed at the people who seemed to be in charge of the units.
We see that nowadays as intelligent fighting, back then, they (the British) viewed it as barbarous and cowardly.
In the end, it comes down to military people who don't want to change the way they fight, because the way they fought is what they know and are geared towards. We are just as (even more so) susceptible to that mindset, although I have had some indications (at least before our military was woke and broken) that our military leadership was taking into account future ways of waging war, how to fight it, and how to defend against it, but...
Warfare is a history of innovation to offensive war, and counter-innovation to defend and neutralize those new methods of war. It is constant, ongoing, and lots of people die while that pendulum of innovation swings back and forth between offensive innovation and defensive innovation.
I just don't want to be one of those people participating on the ground on defense when the pendulum has swung to innovation on offense.