> the final fall of Carthage in the second Punic war

The final (non-metaphorical) Fall happened at the end of the third Punic War about 50 years later.

I've heard the hypothesis that many in the US elite saw the confrontation with USSR as being similar to the Punic wars. With US similar to Carthage being the sea/trading power and USSR similar to Rome being the land power - poorer, but highly militarized. This being one of the arguments for keeping the US military budget high, as one of the reason for Carthage destruction was it's elites had a lot of money, but didn't invest enough into army and navy.

> The war elephants weren’t so veteran and so the Roman’s were able to scare them off as they charged

Just smear a bunch of pigs with flammable grease, set on fire, and send off towards the elephants who will promptly panic.

Super easy, barely an inconvience.

Most war elephants were extensively trained with burning pigs. But they forgot to allocate enough budget for flaming porcine that year, and the mistake was fatal.

This is why the Congress never fails to add pork to every spending bill, just in case the Romans return.