e.g., Wojtek frequently uses terms like "transaction cost" and works with a set of theoretical premises about human behavior, human organizations, and social structure.
many people denounce lefties in general and members of leninists organizations a brainwashed members of cults. many people saw al-Qaeda as an organization that brainwashes its members, actively recruits, sees itself as superior to others, etc.
in both cases, and in your analysis of the mil, i don't see the value of this approach. i don't see it, first and foremost, because it simply dismisses the reasons for membership in those groups as an aberration that requires unusual and extreme rituals for otherwise, no one would join these organizations. the ideas and values these organizations subscribe to, it seems, are so far outside what is considered "normal" in our culture or rational for the individual in full possession of his/her faculties that the only explanation is that they must be brainwashed with rituals and so forth.
I have no idea what your point is, but labeling them cults seems to wipe away any real understanding of the group, the individuals, and their relationship to the wider social structures and milieu within which they exist.
kelley