A column by E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post, which argues there is no reason to rush a decision on deploying more troops to Afghanistan, also highlights the disastrous effects wars historically have had on a president's domestic agenda.

Historian Robert Dallek, who has studied the administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, among other presidencies, is quoted by Mr. Dionne as offering President Obama a simple, sobering observation on wars and domestic reform -- the former routinely kills off the latter.

Mr. Dionne says Mr. Dallek told the president that this was true regardless of whether a war was considered necessary in hindsight. The Progressive Era of the early 1900s was ended by World War I; Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was swamped and effectively ended by World War II; Harry Truman's Fair Deal -- which included a universal health care plan -- was derailed by the Korean War, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society sunk beneath the cost and societal rancor generated by the Vietnam War.

If anything, the United States today, as the president weighs requests for thousands more troops in Afghanistan, is far less able to fund both "guns and butter," or war and domestic programs simultaneously.

In fact, the U.S. likely never has experienced anything approaching our current level of indebtedness, even lacking a truly nation-threatening conflict like the Revolution, the Civil War or World War II. If we commit now to a long struggle involving

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many thousands of U.S. soldiers, that might prove the death knell to key domestic initiatives like health care reform and revival of the economy.

If history is any guide, the president can kiss those goals good-bye the instant he commits to war.