> That has never happened in my lifetime or that of my parents.

Unless your parents are really young, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War is an obvious counterexample. There was a reasonably clear goal and the goal was accomplished.

I will grant that this is the only example I can think of right now, though.

I was in high school then, and unlike others I actually remember the bullshit I hear on the news. We were told that it wasn't like Korea, because the troops would come home immediately. To the contrary, the continued presence (to the present day!) of USA military in Kuwait, Iraq, and especially Saudi destabilized the Middle East and was the primary motivator for the author of 9/11. If evicting Iraqis from Kuwait was "the goal", why was that other crap necessary?

I think listening to the news to figure out what goals anyone has is a pretty lost cause. The news anchors will say things that have no bearing on reality. People they interview will say things that have only slightly more bearing on reality, maybe.

I agree that keeping troops in place after the war was a bit questionable. Though one does need to answer the "OK, we kick Iraq out, what keeps them from coming back?" question. Which was answered in a ham-handed way, if at all. Keeping troops in Kuwait maybe made sense. Keeping troops in Saudi... one of the ostensible goals was in fact to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Saudi, not just to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. I do think in retrospect this was a bad idea. It's harder to tell how it looked at the time, and in particular what the Saudi government was telling the US government.

Kuwait's position, of a rich weak nation with no military alliances bordering a hungry strong one, was somewhat untenable. It is folly to fight a war for a short-term benefit. If spanking Saddam and then leaving would so obviously result in his invading Kuwait again, then the decision to deploy was effectively a decision to deploy indefinitely [0]. That was also folly. One can forgive impermanent mistakes, however. In retrospect, withdrawing troops soon after they repelled Iraq and then encouraging fracking in USA would have been a better decision. It was certainly discussed at the time, and Korea was certainly mentioned in those discussions. The reason we didn't "choose" to do that, is that military-industrial complex would have made much less money in that case. That's always true, however. An ineffective military that is always fighting is an eternal fountain of money for them.

[0] One supposes that another option would have been to disrupt the governance of Iraq such that it would stop invading Kuwait, but later experience suggests that could also have had its drawbacks...

> destabilized the Middle East

I don't think pre-1990 Middle East, where Iraq had just invaded and occupied a neighboring state (Kuwait) was exactly a stable place, either. Remember also the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War.

Communist ideology as embraced by nations typically involves spreading that ideology as far and wide as possible (including in the non-purified forms of communism). Your opening sounds like the USA had no reason to pressure the DPRK. I can't speak to specific incidents you may have in mind, but communism would have spread globally, bringing with it suffering, had it not been opposed and pressured.

At some point you have to stand up to despots in the name of human rights.

This has never been a goal of the Department of State - only the excuse.