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SO what did we expect? That after we'd bombed Slobodan Milosevic into submission, Kosovo would become quiet and peaceful? That the Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Americans first described as a terrorist organisation involved with drug smuggling, and then supplied with weapons and camouflage uniforms, would suddenly start behaving nicely to the few Serbs who haven't fled the province?
The latest Kosovo problem is largely of our making. KFOR may believe it is even-handed and neutral, but that isn't how either the Serbs or the KLA see it. They blame KFOR, both for the way it is operating and for being in Kosovo in the first place.
Those of us with longer memories may recall how the early welcome for the British Army from Northern Ireland Catholics in 1969 quickly changed to outright hostility, which was soon followed by the terrorism of the IRA.
Norman Lewis, in his superb book The Honoured Society, describes how the United States turned the Mafia into its fifth column before the Allies invaded Sicily in 1943. As a result, the military operation went off quickly and smoothly, and few American lives were lost. But new life was breathed into the Mafia, which had been almost destroyed by Mussolini. In the long run, far more damage was done to American interests than would have happened if the US forces had just staged their landings in the traditional fashion.
It is always tempting to see some big military effort, such as the bombing of Yugoslavia, as being an end in itself. President Clinton probably did not think beyond the actual bombing campaign, if only because Madeleine Albright kept assuring him that Milosevic would give in after a few days. As we found out, there have been more accurate forecasts. Perhaps it does not matter very much to Mr Clinton any more. The immediate problem was eventually solved, Nato held together and no one is much interested in what is going on in Kosovo now.
But nothing has been solved, and someone else will have to pay the price. Which has, of course, been the pattern of just about everything that has happened since Yugoslavia started to break down under the pressure of Serb and Croat nationalism.
The outside world was always on a hiding to nothing. If it stood by and watched, as Britain and France did during the Bosnian war, it was accused of feebleness and appeasement. Yet listening to the "something must be done" tendency and bombing Serbia has not exactly proved very impressive either.
What we have managed to do now, by intervening on behalf of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, is to commit a serious injustice against the Serbs by effectively cutting them off from their national religious and historical sites in Kosovo. This is territory they hold dear.
At some stage relatively soon, Milosevic will surely cease to be Yugoslavia's president. Maybe the crowds will bring him down; maybe there will be a coup; maybe he will merely go into the next room and do the decent thing. If we are lucky, a democrat will take over. That certainly seems likely at the moment.
In other words, we will have the encouraging result we saw in Argentina after the Falklands war, with the military junta dismissed by a properly elected civilian government, rather than the unsatisfactory outcome of the Gulf war, where Saddam Hussein has lingered on in power almost a decade after being attacked by the most powerful force in human history.
Yet whoever takes over in Belgrade will need a satisfactory outcome over Kosovo if Serbia is to become an acceptable member of the international community again - and a satisfactory outcome seems a long way off.
It's hard, looking back at the events of this year and everything that led up to them, to shake off a mental image: a bunch of people are walking past a house when they hear the sounds of screams and a fight coming from inside it; it's impossible to get any clear notion of the cause, but the outsiders charge in anyway, hitting the residents over the head at random and smashing the furniture until everyone is exhausted.
Perhaps it makes the outsiders feel better, but I'm not sure how valuable a way this is of solving domestic disputes.