> ... seeing how horrible the impact of war has been on my friends and people in my community ...
They earned money from it. US wars are first and formost sort of a public works program that's an excuse for paying a lot of people their salaries and creating orders for companies. They are of course created mostly to advance the careers and wealth of people in the echolons of military, but they feed a lot of ordinary Americans. They are mechanism of funneling tax money into the pockets of rich bureaucrats and people that economy doesn't need. How unneeded they are is clearly visible when the war ends and they are tossed to the curb (regardless of the damage they suffered).
It is not "simply the truth." I point to 6,000 veterans and you point to... what, a story on NPR?
On OC I started a Slack channel on VA issues, thinking they must all be fuming about it. No one joined. I had a Townhall with a lawyer. No one had VA issues; all of their legal questions were about their discharge papers (DD 214) and eligibility for various benefits.
It is simply the truth that the vast majority of vets never see any combat. The tip of the spear is very narrow.
A lot of the corruption in the US government surrounds defense and industry, and it is simply the truth that we treat veterans horribly, many people in the military joined because they came from underprivileged backgrounds and needed a way out, and we send them into horrifying situations and simply discard them when they get home. The GI Bill does not in any way soothe or absolve this nation of the way it treats its veterans or our ceaseless desire for war in the first place.