‘Keep the Oil’: Trump Revives Charged Slogan for New Syria Troop Mission (original) (raw)

Politics|‘Keep the Oil’: Trump Revives Charged Slogan for New Syria Troop Mission

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/us/politics/trump-syria-oil-fields.html

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After dismissing Syria as a land of “sand and death,” Mr. Trump is redeploying American troops around its oil fields. But how the U.S. might benefit from them is unclear.

An American military vehicle, part of a convey arriving from northern Iraq, passing an oil pump Saturday in Qamishli, Syria.Credit...Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Oct. 26, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump has offered several justifications for an American withdrawal from Syria. He has dismissed the country as nothing but “sand and death,” discounted its American-backed Kurdish fighters as “no angels,” and argued that he is winding down “endless wars.”

But in recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional troops to the war-ravaged country. He has declared that the United States has “secured” oil fields in the country’s chaotic northeast and suggested that the seizure of the country’s main natural resource justifies America further extending its military presence there.

“We have taken it and secured it,” Mr. Trump said of Syria’s oil during remarks at the White House on Sunday, after announcing the killing of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mr. Trump went on to remind his audience of how, during the Iraq war, he called for selling off Iraq’s oil to defray the conflict’s enormous cost.

“I said keep the oil,” Mr. Trump recounted. “If they are going into Iraq, keep the oil. They never did. They never did.”

Trump’s message is puzzling to former government officials and Middle East analysts who say that controlling Syria’s oil fields — which are the legal property of the Syrian government — poses numerous practical, legal and political obstacles.

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