That canary in the coalmine, Richard Clarke, reviews the crises ignored while Iraq consumes all the oxygen in Washington:

As the president contemplates sending even more U.S. forces into the Iraqi sinkhole, he should consider not only the thousands of fatalities, the tens of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of billions of dollars already lost. He must also weigh the opportunity cost of taking his national security barons off all the other critical problems they should be addressing -- problems whose windows of opportunity are slamming shut, unheard over the wail of Baghdad sirens.

Clarke's list of unattended problems is here. Hint: global warming tops the list.