Sounds a little like a teaser from that timeless, I-like-Ike 1950's toad, Andy Rooney -- but I don't suppose he could ever quite say that. I like it plenty, anyway.
The pending bloodbath in Iraq comes to mind. Could we have toppled Saddam and kept a bloodbath off the agenda? I doubt it; it took a bloodbath for us to install him, after all, and we had him on what you might call bloodbath retainer during the Iran-Iraq unpleasantness a few years back.
Clio is a harsh mistress for us humans to live under -- though we gave her birth. She sees to it, somehow, that the criminals always get to send the innocent the bill for their crimes.