veterans these days have little pride over what they accomplished or failed to accomplish, the war stories are hard to make glorious sounding, they all have some severe medical issue caused by the military that the military refuses to acknowledge and/or help them with, so very many homeless veterans…
I don't disagree with your conclusion but fyi - korean vietnam and 80s conflicts vets very rarely have gung-ho battle glory stories to sell. they experienced as much trauma as iraq/afghanistan vets, there's not a lot of glory to go around. the familial tradition of service is being broken, but the service is also trying to diversify and get away from being 80%+ legacy/ mil family tradition we had in the 90s.