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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsISIS once made 40million a month from oil...WTF has the Con done
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1187283716768456704.htmlTrump keeps talking about "securing the oil" in Syria. Behind that phrase is two ideas:
1. A not very strategic but understandable US plan to deny the oil to both Assad and ISIS.
2. Trump's insane fantasy that the US can take the oil for itself.
Donald Trump claims to be securing oil in Syria for the US - here's the reality
Sitting at the mahogany table that dominates the White Houses Cabinet Room this week, Donald Trump made an unexpected pronouncement on Syria.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/24/donald-trump-claims-securing-oil-syria-us-reality/
The oil would be a big prize for either ISIS or Assad.
ISIS once made $40m/month from oil and the money could help fund the jihadists' resurgence. Assad could use the money to rebuild his shattered state and ease his own dependence on smuggled Iranianian oil.
So you can see why the US would want to keep it out of their hands.
Denying it to ISIS would be in service of the strategic goal of keeping the jihadists down. Denying it to Assad makes less sense strategically but I guess gives the US a little leverage.
Then there is Trump's pipe dream of "taking the oil" for America's benefit, a fantasy he's been nursing for years.
Long before he was president he talked about how the US should be take Iraq's oil as a price for overthrowing Saddam.
It's simultaneously a very 1970s mindset - when Middle East oil was seen as the world's singlemost strategic asset - and a throwback to ideas from the 1700s and earlier about wartime plunder.
It would be totally illegal for the US to just take Syria's oil.
But even if it wasn't, it just doesn't make that much sense. Syria's oil fields are tiny compared to America's. No US oil company is going to have any interest in rooting around amid war in Deir Ezzor.
It seems the US is going to go ahead with the first plan. Trump is still holding onto the fantasy of the second.
"We've secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of US troops will remain in the area...we'll be deciding what we're going to do with it in the future."
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ISIS once made 40million a month from oil...WTF has the Con done (Original Post)
pbmus
Oct 2019
OP
dawg day
(7,947 posts)1. The oil doesn't belong to us.
I know little niceties like that don't matter to Trump, but if he wants to get out of wars, maybe he shouldn't send our troops to take another country's oil.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)2. Maybe trump's personal US troops will guard The Oil until he makes a sweet deal with oh, say
Rosneft or the like, he gets his 15%, then GUESS WHAT the troops are coming home, FINALLY!!!
Motherfucking hell
Midnightwalk
(3,131 posts)3. Oil is money and power
Agree with most of that except the implication of this
No US oil company is going to have any interest in rooting around amid war in Deir Ezzor.
I agree that no us company is going be directly involved in drilling but that is not necessary for people in the us to profit from the military having control.
That only makes it more disgusting