I think you are putting too much on people, especially those just out of school with no real prospects for their lives, to really understand what they are doing. If people en masse refused to go to war, that would be great and people might be able to do that if a lot of others also did. During the Vietnam war, there were a lot of people who refused to go. Many of them came to Canada where they stayed until there was an amnesty to allow them back in the US. That kind of mass refusal has not happened again, I don't think. I have to add that those people are now "old". More old people who have worked against what the elites are doing to our world.
Spending months/years in prison would be futile, and worse than death.
Then let them go there and kill, trying to avoid being killed themselves. Just so it's not futile.
I think you are putting too much on people, especially those just out of school with no real prospects for their lives, to really understand what they are doing. If people en masse refused to go to war, that would be great and people might be able to do that if a lot of others also did. During the Vietnam war, there were a lot of people who refused to go. Many of them came to Canada where they stayed until there was an amnesty to allow them back in the US. That kind of mass refusal has not happened again, I don't think. I have to add that those people are now "old". More old people who have worked against what the elites are doing to our world.
That's because there was a draft. If that was brought back things might change.