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The coalition of the willing didn't have the UNs approval when they went in to Iraq. They got it retroactively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council...

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."[1]

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Again, I'm talking about territorial wars, which the Iraq invasion was not. The Iraq invasion is relatively mundane on the scale of things that happened in the last 60 years. Do you think the USSR ever got the UN approval for invading Afghanistan in the 80s?

Territorial wars, not just any invasion or a military op or a coup or installing a friendly regime. The very fact that you don't see much difference shows that the world has forgotten how terrible they used to be.

I am pretty sure those victims of collateral damage don't really care about your definition of what type of war it is.

The fact is that al most no one got killed when the Russians went in. The same cannot be said about the wars we have ventured into.

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