Probably the best example is Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
You should click on it to see the full-size. It should be on the walls of all war planners. Napoleon's army invaded Russia on June 24, 1812. Less than two years later, Czar Alexander I and the Russian Army, part of the Sixth Coalition, marched through the streets of Paris.
History is replete with examples of nations which began what they thought would be splendid little wars, only to end out with their nations being bled out and often shattered. Little interventions can turn into wars that will sap one or both sides.
But I don't see the chickenhawk mentality ending anytime soon. And with the increasing robotization of combat, I suspect that things will only get worse.
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At some point, nations may realize the big profits (and the least risk) come from attacking their own populace. Sure, it's only for short-term gain, but that's all they can see, anyway.
That is a wonderful illustration, probably the best one, from Edward Tufte's great book The Visual Disply of Quantitative Information.
How about Afghanistan? For the past 3000 years any number of empires have gone with great fanfare. No one has won except Genghis Khan and the Sikhs (and them only temporarily by building skull pyramids). Most of those forays were massacred, sometimes to the man. One of the Brit forays had one survivor who was insane and that winter the wind blew British skulls down the Khyber Pass...
And that's what drives me batshit about our presence there and Obama's reup: What isn't clear about a 3000 year track record. The Afghanis have been fighting each other all that time; they unite only when an outsider comes in. Think of them as a nation of ragtag SEALs....
I am not sure we know what we are doing. Actually, scratch that, I am sure we do not know what we are doing. Survival of the fittest? Peace on earth? Death before dishonor? Sometimes I think the whole point is just to raise more people so there are more people to kill. We are all just flailing.
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