Your kidding? Here's your answer: Who cares why we went to the Balkans. Why who cares? It's of no value (the Balkans), economic, geo-political, geographic.
Military defeat? So a few planes are shot down and the US military is defeated???? So we lost in Mogadishu too?
I said we "fight nice". Had the USA an objective in the Balkans, a reason for fighting, a real objective, there wouldn't be a Serbian city left standing. The oppression of one group of people, of a country, of a culture, is not cause for the US military to engage in battle.
WWII was different. The vital interest and soil of the USA was threatened by Japan. I think the prosecution (by the USA) of the second world war speaks for itself.
If Iraq had been perceived as a threat equal to that posed by the Japanese in WWII, the war and the outcome would have been decided in less than a month. We "fight nice".