When you come with a large army, invade the country, remove the local government, and replace it with puppets working for your country's interests, "territorial claim" is just a twist of words.
Sorry, but that's stupid on a number of levels. First, territorial claims can be made with or without war, the later of which is (thankfully!) what we're actually talking about with China and the islands. Second, anyone who thinks that the government in Iraq has been a puppet of the United States just isn't paying attention.
I get it, you don't like the United States, but you're desperately trying to draw equivalencies that do not exist. It's been a really long time since the US annexed anything. That doesn't make the loss of life that occurs in its small wars any less serious but you cannot talk about international events if you lump everything bad that happens in the world into the same ill-defined category and then use whatever labels you have at hand to refer to that category. Annexation isn't invasion. They might be associated - Russia annexed Crimea after an invasion, after all - but they're not the same thing.
If simply using terms properly doesn't move you, then there's this: you can tell a lot about a county's ambitions based on what its territorial disputes are and what it's trying to acquire. In this annexation = invasion world that you're inhabiting, you'd conclude that the United States wants to colonize the Middle East. I assure you that this is not the case. We just want to buy their oil, aside from that we don't give a damn about them. Not saying whether that's smart or ethical or not, but that's the reality.
> Second, anyone who thinks that the government in Iraq has been a puppet of the United States just isn't paying attention.
Please, educate me then.
> I get it, you don't like the United States
Never even said that. I don't like SOME of what the US does, but I think it's a great country in many other aspects. Thanks for the strawman, always appreciated in a discussion.
> It's been a really long time since the US annexed anything
There's real annexation and de facto annexation. There are several countries around the world which are tightly controlled by the US, either through diplomatic means, economic or military pressure. By the way, I did not mention the word "annexation" anywhere in my comment, so I'm not sure where it came from in the discussion.
> In this annexation = invasion world that you're inhabiting, you'd conclude that the United States wants to colonize the Middle East.
No, the US has no interest in colonizing the Middle East. They want to control it to ensure they have priority access to energetic means, and ensure than nobody else does (like China, Russia or other emerging powers). Energy is Power. It's obvious that most of the conflicts we see in the Middle East are linked with struggles to get access to large sources of Energy.
> We just want to buy their oil, aside from that we don't give a damn about them
Oh, I don't have the slight illusion that you care about locals there. Invasion is not motivated by "bringing democracy" to the world, this is just political bullshit, I don't think anyone believes in this anymore.
Whether US wanted to or intended to "colonize" the Middle East is irrelevant. For a few years US used its army so that it could hold swathes of Iraqi territory to do what it does and that is just a fact.
What exactly did the US do with vast swathes of Iraqi territory for those years?
China is the one that made out like a bandit with the new supply of Iraqi oil. The US only got a giant bill out of it all for over a trillion dollars, a lot of dead and injured soldiers, and a lot of destroyed military hardware.
What the US didn't acquire: Iraq's oil; land; tax revenue; any territorial claims; the right to station large numbers of troops in Iraqi territory; gold or other plunder.
And further, the US left when it was told to. The supposed US puppet threw the US out, and we didn't do anything to them with our military in response.
You know, colonialism and the distinction between empires and democracies is one of the preeminent topics in political science and the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If you don't care about any of that, what are we even talking about?
