The roots of the conflict in Kosovo go back at least 600+ years, to the great battle in 1389. The current troubles descend directly from the Yugoslavian government's decision, precipitated by the Serbian majority, to rescind Kosovo's autonomy after Tito's death and redesignate the region as a province of Serbia. Serbia, in turn and especially after the rise of the nationalist leader Slobodon Melosovich (sp?), took active steps to suppress the Albanian majority (by, among other things, imposing direct rule from Serbia proper, banning Albanian as an official language and effectively closing Kosovo's only university) and to encourage Serbs to relocate to their "ancestral homeland".

Active warfare broke out between the Kosovars and the Serbs in 1996. NATO, perhaps visualizing a repeat of the war in Bosnia and Croatia that had recently ended (and maybe feeling some guilt for not stopping it before it became the bloody mess that it did) declared peace in early 1999. It is entirely untrue that either the air war or the introduction of peacekeepers on the ground (KFOR) was an American military operation, although US forces were certainly major participants.