I mean, to be fair, so is slavery.
I think it's important to acknowledge that conscription is a violation of human rights, and absolutely a violation of human autonomy and dignity.
The reason it exists is because historically, the primary source of military power has been the number of armed humans you can put on the battlefield. That's much less true now, but even in WWII the technology wasn't yet up to that point.
And while the US did not end up being materially at risk in WWII (aside from some very small exceptions like Pearl Harbor), that was not a guarantee going in. The Nazis were hellbent on wiping out all opposition to them, and the fear that, if Europe was lost, they would cross the ocean to attack us was not at all crazy. Furthermore, our allies absolutely were under existential threat—and in such a situation, it's frankly irresponsible of a nation not to use conscription if that's actually likely to make a difference.
Either saying "conscription is slavery, therefore it is never justifiable" or "conscription is nothing like slavery, soldiers get treated well" ignores enough of the truth that they're misleading at best. Sometimes you really do have to deal with nuance.
Conscription for wars fought for political purposes is qualitatively different from conscription to defend your country. (But this is a continuum rather than two disjoint categories.) The former happens when the ambitions of the leaders exceed the capabilities of the state. The latter is based on the view that a country is a collective of its citizens, and the citizens are therefore personally responsible for defending it.
You have the option to emigrate as opposed to fight, which is fundamentally what differentiates conscription from slavery (and human rights violations). You're not legally obligated to stay in your country.
Hello?
Germany introduced law, your are required to notify ministry and get permission, of you leave country for couple of weeks.
Ukraine closed border for men in like 10 seconds.
Um...what?
Desertion has, historically, been a capital crime. Trying to paint conscription as not being a kind of captivity because "you're not legally obligated to stay in your country" is at best wildly disingenuous, and at worst just flat-out wrong.
I think you might need to take quite a bit more time to consider this issue, lest you prove your username much truer than you probably want.
> Desertion has, historically, been a capital crime.
And it remained so for the US in WW2, although the sentence was carried out just once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Slovik
Major General Norman "Dutch" Cota, who was at the execution, called it "the toughest 15 minutes of his life". For context, Cota was also present at the bloodbath on Omaha Beach, where he famously rallied troops.
You can absolutely emigrate prior to the conscription coming to fruition. It has to be permanent, or it's draft evasion, but it is perfectly legal.
Sorry for the edits confusing things. I can see earlier how you thought I meant desertion as opposed to emigration.
Most people do not have the ability to emigrate. Hell, a great many people barely have the economic ability to move across their own state, but emigration requires that the country you're trying to move to is willing to let you live and work there permanently. I don't know if you're familiar with the difficulties involved in this, but I can assure you they are significant.
Dismissing the loss of freedom inherent in conscription by saying you can avoid it by abandoning your entire life, leaving your country, your job, probably your family behind...even if you do have both the money and a legal path to immigrate somewhere else, which, again, most people do not, that's hardly a reasonable alternative.