President Donald Trump’s bombing of 10 boats allegedly carrying illegal drugs in the Caribbean was as lawless as it was performative. Trump, who always seeks to demonstrate his machismo, has been trying to outperform previous presidents who showed their toughness in the war on drugs. His deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean may indicate stronger performative future military action against Latin American governments he accuses of being involved in drug trafficking.

For a moment, let’s put aside the fact that the militarization of the war on drugs—by the police and armed forces—has failed abysmally since Richard Nixon instituted it in the early 1970s. Instead, let’s understand that whenever the government declares war on anything other than a conventional military adversary—such as when President Lyndon B. Johnson declared on poverty in the 1960s—the American taxpayers should be prepared to open their wallets without getting much in return. Plenty of poverty and drugs are still around.

And what about the global war on terrorism, which has been waged since al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Presidents George W.........

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