On the avoidance of small wars

[JMA]

When a monkey hits a key and gets an electric shock in response, he's not going to repeat that often. He's not going to try to do it better often. (S)He'll finally settle with the understanding that this key is bad.

Amazingly Dayuhan got this one correct.

There is a quote which has many variations:

"Wars are started by old men for greed and power but are left to young men to do the fighting and the dying."

Could someone please tell my why humans have so much trouble learning that war isn't profitable and cannot really be done 'right', so it should be avoided unless forced on you?
It can't possibly be a lack of memory, for I see people discussing here in the general tone of 'do small wars right / wrong', and these people are still trembling due to recent electroshocks.

Actually small wars can be done right. The Romans handled their provinces for quite a while that way. The US don't know how, the Brits have forgotten and the French have been reduced to minor interventions for a long time now.

It has more to do with the Grand Strategy (being the desired end result) and the political will than the ability of soldiers. If you end up controlling the Saudi oil fields (for example) and the sea lanes to import the stuff there are no doubt benefits.

Profitable is a difficult word to use. In the case of Iraq the war was extremely 'unprofitable' for the American people (taxpayers) while being 'highly profitable' for the likes of Haliburton.

But we know who the war mongers are and know when wars are about to break out. We have had some laughs about my "three cruise missiles theory" but a serious case can be made for such short sharp interventions in order to prevent wars (where a lot less people die in the process).

Back to reality then, when you look at avoiding war you need to focus your attention on methods to constrain megalomanic politicians rather than the military.