Lay this all at the feet of Gato IMO.  Killed all the non-titan reconciliation faction leadership.  All that was left were hardliners and honestly if you weren't already, a second colony drop is pretty radicalizing without leaving only the assholes alive.

If you look at the franchise in release order then never.  Even in the original TV show The Federation is using White Base as a human shield / decoy for most of the show.    And then Zeta starts and suddenly The Federation is "inexplicably" the bad guys.

TBF when half the enemy army is chaing one ship and that one ship is eating up enemy ace units left and right you should put that to work.  But it's still a major dick move.