The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.

But that was an offensive war, and most countries don’t do those.

Finland was much much safer before.

Depends on how you define “to be safe”. The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire. That sounded a bit scary, but we shrugged it off, because it would require a war and that would hurt the Russia so much that such a war would be idiocy and therefore will not happen.

In case you don’t know where the borders of the Russian Empire were, they included for example these:

• Finland
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• half of Poland
• Ukraine
• Moldova

The Russia has declared that it wants to make all of those countries part of the Russian Federation.

So, we were not in danger, because the Russia would not be stupid enough to begin a war in Ukraine or in Finland, as it was clear that it would hurt the Russia’s economy more than it could ever be of use to it. The Finnish defence doctrine was based on the concept of credible defence. We were told in school that “they can attack us and they could most likely even take over all of Finland, but our army is able to incur such big losses to them that they will not want to do that.”
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.

So, we found out two things:

• the Russia is really interested in acting to its declarations. They are not just empty words as we had assumed
• the Russia does not care about losses – therefore the doctrine of credible defence does not protect from the Russia

You can say that we were not in danger because we didn’t know that we are in danger. And in some way that’s true. But, once we found out that we are in danger, then, well, we were.
Since the doctrine of credible defence went down the drain, meaning that Finland effectively did not have a defence that is able to protect it, what else than joining NATO do you suggest we should have done to gain a level of defence capability able to keep the Russia out of Finland? Name one other option that we had.

Your idea that the Russia has a right to defend itself by preemptively taking over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, half of Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova is, well… It would be impolite saying what it makes you look like.

EDIT: And of course this is relevant: In January 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 35 %. No “let’s join NATO” propaganda had been made at all, but in May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %. The only thing that caused this was that people around Finland saw that what we had been taught about the Russia in our schools was crap. It was part of the school curriculum to make sure every Finn knows that the Russia is not going to attack us, with an explanation of why not. And it seemed to make sense. And everyone had that in their heads. And then… We saw what the Russia is doing in Ukraine, and it was clear from that alone that shit, we are fucked! That meant, 80 % of the people decided they wanted a new kind of safety against the Russia.
Maybe you can say that they told that in our schools for about 40 years just so that in 2025 Finland could join NATO. But… Well, you know.
In May 2022 you could go to any bar to talk with random people and it would be clear that the assumption was “we are joining NATO. There is no other option.” There was no real dialogue about it, because basically everybody was of the same opinion. For the abovementioned reasons.