America’s Foreign Adventures Will Cost Taxpayers Billions

Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot on his mind in the spring of 1942, as he girded the US for a long, brutal battle against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific. There was the daunting challenge of retooling factories to make bombs and tanks. The logistics of moving thousands of troops overseas and supplying them with uniforms and food. And the public-relations campaign to prepare Americans for the grim reality that many of the millions of young men drafted to fight wouldn’t be returning home.

Amid all this hurried planning, the president was also preoccupied with another urgent ...