13 Embarrassing Military Blunders From History

Soldiers are (often) undoubtedly courageous individuals willing to risk their lives for a greater cause.  At the end of the day, soldiering is a profession like any other. Like any other poor sap in a 9 to 5, soldiers have made disastrous mistakes throughout history, from foolish Roman generals to overconfident American commanders. These follies, as well as their repercussions, shaped conflicts as recent as World War Two and even as early as the Second Punic War.

A few were caused by underestimating the opponent, while others were caused by the lack of understanding of the battlefield geography, but they all resulted in a calamity for these leaders as well as their troops.

We humans can't seem to quit fouling it up long after Sun Tzu released his treatise on war. In these examples the battlefield has morphed from a somber reminder of man's destructive nature to a comedy of errors that rivals a Leslie Nielsen film, from shooting your general to not informing your extended territories know a war was going on in the first place.

The list of foolish wars is back, but this time it includes a few cheap tricks as well as bizarre ends to the world's most unnecessary wars.

Here are 13 of the most egregious military gaffes: