ref: Tom Friedman (below)

Here, in a Guardian column of two years ago, is Julie Burchill, a lefty who gets it. On Leftist critics of the invasion of Iraq:

I am in favour of war against Iraq...I speak as someone who was born and raised to be anti-American...I was against the US because, whenever people sought autonomy, freedom and justice, it was against them. But that narrative is ended now and a new configuration has emerged.

The new enemies of America, and of the west in general, believe that these countries promote too much autonomy, freedom and justice. They are the opposite of socialism even more than they are the opposite of capitalism.

"Saddam Hussein may have killed hundreds of thousands of his own people - but he hasn't done anything to us! We shouldn't invade any country unless it attacks us!" I love this one, it's so mind-bogglingly selfish - and it's always wheeled out by people who call themselves "internationalists", too...On this principle, if we'd known about Hitler gassing the Jews all through the 1930s, we still shouldn't have invaded Germany; the Jews were, after all, German citizens and not our business. If you really think it's better for more people to die over decades under a tyrannical regime than for fewer people to die during a brief attack by an outside power, you're really weird and nationalistic and not any sort of socialist that I recognise...Military inaction, unless in the defence of one's own country, is the most extreme form of narcissism and nationalism; people who preach it are the exact opposite of the International Brigade

Though I disagree with lefties like Julie Burchill and Christopher Hitchens on nearly all their politics, this they understand: their world will be lot worse if we lose the Fourth World War. The people they care about will be a lot worse off, including the Iraqis. Burchill and Hitchens understand that tho they may hate capitalism, there are far worse alternatives, and the rise of Hussein's brand of secular fascism and the Islamist fascism of al Qaeda and it's allies are two of them.