Just stumbled over this at tth after missing it originally. It makes pretty interesting reading in light of the new movie*, because you're right - the AOS crew are absolutely a bunch of cowboys (the fact that they're brilliant cowboys only seems to make them more rash because they know what they're capable of). Alternate Kirk and his crew may be the people they've had to be to survive, they might even be what Starfleet and the Federation need them to be, but I empathise with this Kirk's perspective. They are a wolf pack and that's a scary thing to say about such a young group given so much power.

*For all that Into Darkness has them in conflict with rogue elements of their own organisation to avert a war one of my major impressions from the movie was just how casually rash they all were.