Matthew Yglesias, in The American Prospect:

The time is right, wonkish Washington seems to feel, for ambitious new thinking, for new grand bargains, for new initiatives and big ideas. I’m just wondering why.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but: Don’t you know there’s a war on? Or, rather, two — one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan — and the United States is losing both.

In some ways I worry about what happens when greens seek to put more and more topics under the umbrella of “environmentalism.” Is it really possible to debase the coinage of an idea? Is there such a thing as ideological inflation?

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But it’s clear that no good policies will be able to get through Congress until the war in Iraq ends, and perhaps not for some time after that. At the very least, we aren’t going to be able to spend the requisite sums until the "defense" budget is cut. That makes ending the war an imperative for anyone seeking a reorientation in American policies. The war isn’t just a green issue, but a green issue it certainly is.