Salon's cover story today puts it better than I've been able to:

Instead of fighting fascists or other genocidal tyrants as it might have during the Spanish Civil War or World War II or even during the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, the modern left fights war; because the United States is the world's most significant military agent, and because it has so often used military power to support anti-democratic governments, the left understandably fights the United States. Such opposition to war is reflexive, and too often outweighs its outrage on behalf of the oppressed. Its capacity for the kind of muscular empathy that leads to action has atrophied, leaving only the possibility of reaction, of opposition. The antiwar left does not mount massive protests against China, Pakistan or Egypt. Millions do not pour into the streets on behalf of the student-led democracy movement in Iran. And Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are not angrily compared to Hitler -- that treatment is more often reserved for George W. Bush.

Some have more sophisticated views, but not many. As evidenced in this blog, just try to get anti-war folks to admit that one of the detriments of their position is leaving a psychopathic thug in power (hint: it's not easy). Many obstinately refuse to even acknowledge that the "peace" they argue for is most likely as ugly and brutish as a war might be.

Yesterday Andrew Sullivan referenced this eye-witness account of human beings put through an industrial plastic shredder in Iraq.

You might reasonably argue that the horrors of war would outstrip the current horrors of Saddam's existing regime. But it is morally-bankrupt lunacy to deny that those horrors currently exist and that a consequence of your position is to leave them in place.