Not to sound obtuse, but this is slightly pie in the sky thinking. If we took that logic, you could ask why we need laws that people must wear seat belts.
You could ask why we have other rules, regulation and laws. Sometimes, the needs of the many (or the greater good) simply outweigh individual whims.
Being forced to fight for a political cause one may not believe in - and likely die for - is rather more fundamental than being forced to wear a seat belt. It’s not a mere “whim” to want to avoid the meat grinder.
One might legitimately argue that “the greater good” for Ukraine would have been better served by taking a far more delicate stance vis-a-vis western orientation than the one Zelenskyy and his government took given the head-banger next door. It was obvious he was up against it as it was never clear - and it still isn’t - that he would get the western backing he needed to make his approach a good one. It was also not clear if he could take the east of the country with him on that path. If they get thrown under the bus by Trump next year, it will have been a disastrous miscalculation, no matter the legitimate aspiration to track his own course.
Anyway, we won’t agree on this. Rather than throwing more scared, unwilling Ukrainians into a pointless losing cause, the west needs to get serious and support the Ukrainians definitively so that they can at least justify the inevitable human losses with an overall victory. Right now, this is headed into disaster territory with Trump on the horizon and the EU incapable of rising to the challenge.
