Too often, liberals and progressives fail to point out the connections between various problems, connections that make it easier to see where our political and media systems are failing us. That is one of the reasons why Dennis Kucinich deserves so much credit for the following two statements during the YouTube Democratic presidential debate.

Well, we have to understand the connection between global warring and global warming. Because when we start talking about wars for oil, we're essentially keeping the same approach to energy.

And I think that the reason is that if you support, for example, in Iraq, if you say that Iraq should privatize its oil for the U.S. oil companies, then what you're doing is you're continuing a commitment to use more oil. If you believe that all options should be put on the table with respect to Iran, that's about oil.

So we need to move away from reliance on oil...

This illustrates the largest connection between the nutty war in Iraq and global warming. There also is a smaller, but significant connection that Kucinich did not have time to get into.

The war itself involves wasting energy and results in extra CO2 emissions.

If you are serious about fighting global warming, part of the effort is calling for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. A lot of conservative Democrats would prefer not to think about this, as would many of the less extreme members of the GOP. But, the longer you drag out the war, and the harder you push for the Iraqi legislation to give Iraqi oil profits to US, British, and Australian oil interests, the more damage you are doing to the planet.