Long before the intervention in Libya--for Afghanistan or Iraq, or even Viet Nam--the United States found itself involved in a peculiar operation on the southern coast of Cuba, at a place called the Bay of pigs.

Beginning in the early hours of 17 April 1961, approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles, delivered and supported by the CIA and the Pentagon, tried to invade their homeland and overthrow Fidel Castro. The exile force was routed within days and sent to the swamps on the run. Castro crowed with victory, while the new Government of John f. Kennedy wallowed in humiliation. "How can we be so stupid?" President Kennedy muttered to his employees.

Sunday is the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion of Cuba, and it comes with Kennedy's question is still begging for an answer. Not only with regard to the Bay of pigs, but a host of other complications that followed. The United States went on to take part in no less than two dozen powerful foreign intervention after 1961, of South-East Asia to the Middle East and Central America. And that was just the 20th century. Then came the 21st, and 9/11, and Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, Libya.

Click for a timeline in which the Bay of Pigs invasion

Given the variety of American interventions--some small, others massive; Some covert, others outright; Some undertaken for humanitarian goals, others for own interests or self defense--it suddenly apples and oranges and draw conclusions about the fruit wearing them to mislead. Nevertheless, if there is an element that almost all U.S. interventions have shared since the Bay of pigs--the elephant, as it were in the Situation Room--it is their tendency to earn the observation Arthur m. Schlesinger Jr. made in his diary after the debacle of 1961: "We not only look like imperialists; We look as ineffective imperialists, which is worse, "wrote the Presidential Advisor; "and we seem stupid, ineffective imperialists, that the worst of all."

Sure, there are arguably successes. President Ronald Reagan the small foray into Grenada and President George H.W. Bush in Panama are good candidates, such as the Gulf war of 1991 (as we can forget that paved the way for what came later in Iraq). President Bill Clinton's 1999 effort in Kosovo also qualifies. But it is worth asking, in view of this country in General sorry history of intervention in the past 50 years, why we keep going back for more, if a child who has his hand on a hot burner cant keep. We seem driven by an almost pathological forced the pain--whether to suffer from the delusion that one way or another, this time, we will have a more pleasant result.

With regard to the current intervention in Libya, has President Obama assured us that we will not for a long time this spring. But Obama, four months after the Bay of pigs, born enough of these interventions to know that the reality has its own way to intervene on even the best laid plans. All the days have turned into weeks, and will soon be months.

Clearly, there are times when the United States just can't avoid power abroad. But our leaders must never be fooled into thinking it is easy, as John Kennedy apparently by the CIA of guarantees was that the Cuban people would rise up in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Likewise, when a President tells the American people that an intervention will be quick and painless, he must be greeted with no less skepticism than you would a contractor home-improvement offer to renovate your kitchen. You can be pretty sure that the job is going to cost twice as much and twice as long as promised. If you are lucky.

Such as the US and NATO allies enter the fifth week in Libya, and if the price tag to more than $ 1 billion goes up, let us not forget that the Bay of pigs only lasted five days and cost only 46 million dollars (less than the average budget of a Hollywood movie these days). There is no denying that it was suffering an acute. American casualties numbered 114, including Cuban exiles and four pilots from the Alabama Air National Guard. The Kennedy administration did not fully recover from the setback until the Cuban Missile Crisis eighteen months later, and the credibility of the United States took a year to heal. But reflects back on that fateful day in 1961, we know that things could have been worse. Indeed, judging from our more recent history of interventions, they usually are.

Jim Rasenberger (jimrasenberger.com) is the author of the new book, "the brilliant disaster – JFK, Castro and America's doomed invasion of Cuba's Bay of pigs."

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