Watching it, what struck me was how much of the question-and-answer period that followed Trump's statement dealt with Syria's oil. (Below are the key passages from the NPR readout.) One could be forgiven if you were to draw the conclusion that al-Baghdadi's death and control of Syria's oil were connected.
Which, of course, they are. The U.S. goal, from the days of the Arab Spring up until now, is regime change in Syria. Control of Syria's oil allows the U.S. to maintain its fantasy that it can force Assad to negotiate away his presidency.
What struck me even more than Trump's lubricious display over Syria's oil was that there was not one peep from the assembled press corp regarding the legality of such a move. It is as if the law of jungle and mafia don behavior have become totally normalized for a head of state in the age of peak neoliberalism.
THE PRESIDENT: No, I think it's great. Look, we don't want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years. They've been fighting for hundreds of years. We're out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil. And we may have to fight for the oil. It's okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there's massive amounts of oil.
And we're securing it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it stops ISIS, because ISIS got tremendous wealth from that oil. We have taken it. It's secured.
Number two — and again, somebody else may claim it, but either we'll negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it, if we think it's fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly. We have tremendous power in that part of the world. We have — you know, the airport is right nearby. A very big, very monstrous, very powerful airport, and very expensive airport that was built years ago. We were in there — we're in that Middle East now for $8 trillion.
So we don't want to be keeping Syria and Turkey. They're going to have to make their own decision. The Kurds have worked along incredibly with us, but in all fairness, it was much easier dealing with the Kurds after they went through three days of fighting, because that was a brutal three days. And if I — we would have said to the Kurds, "Hey, do you mind moving over seven miles?" Because, you know, they were in the middle, mostly. So you have seven or eight miles. "Could you mind moving over?"
Because, I have to say, Turkey has taken tremendous deaths from that part of the world. You know, we call it a safe zone. But it was anything but a safe zone. Turkey has lost thousands and thousands people from that safe zone. So they've always wanted that safe zone, for many years. I'm glad I was able to help them get it. But we don't want to be there; we want to be home. I want our soldiers home or fighting something that's meaningful.
I'll tell you who loves us being there: Russia and China. Because while they build their military, we're depleting our military there. So, Russia loves us being there. Now, Russia likes us being there for two reasons: because we kill ISIS, we kill terrorists, and they're very close to Russia. We're 8,000 miles away. Now, maybe they can get here, but we've done very well with Homeland Security and the ban, which, by the way, is approved by the United States Supreme Court, as you know. You know, there was a reporter that said we lost the case. And he was right, in the early court. He refu- — he didn't want to say; just refused to say that we won the case in the Supreme Court. So, you know.
But we have a very effective ban, and it's very hard for people to come to our country. But it's many thousands of miles away, whereas Russia is right there, Turkey is right there. Syria is there. They're all right there. Excuse me, Iran is right there. Iraq is right there. They all hate ISIS. So, we don't — you know, in theory, they should do something.
And I'll give you something else: The European nations have been a tremendous disappointment because I personally called, but my people called a lot. "Take your ISIS fighters." And they didn't want them. They said, "We don't want them." They came from France, they came from Germany, they came from the UK. They came from a lot of countries. And I actually said to them, "If you don't take them, I'm going to drop them right on your border. And you can have fun capturing them again."
But the United States taxpayer is not going to pay for the next 50 years. You see what Guantanamo costs. We're not going to pay tens of billions of dollars because we were good enough to capture people that want to go back to Germany, France, UK, and other parts of Europe. And they can walk back. They can't walk to our country. We have lots of water in between our country and them.
So, yeah. Go.
[snip]
I spoke with Lindsey Graham just a little while ago. In fact, Lindsey Graham is right over here. And he's been very much involved in this subject. And he's — he's a very strong hawk. But I think Lindsey agrees with what we're doing now.
And, again, there are plenty of other countries that can help them patrol. I don't want to leave 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers on the border.
But where Lindsey and I totally agree is the oil. The oil is, you know, so valuable for many reasons. It fueled ISIS, number one. Number two, it helps the Kurds, because it's basically been taken away from the Kurds. They were able to live with that oil. And number three, it can help us because we should be able to take some also. And what I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an Exxon Mobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly. Right now, it's not big. It's big oil underground, but it's not big oil up top, and much of the machinery has been shot and dead. It's been through wars. But — and — and spread out the wealth.
But, no, we're protecting the oil. We're securing the oil. Now, that doesn't mean we don't make a deal at some point. But I don't want to be — they're fighting for 1,000 years, they're fighting for centuries. I want to bring our soldiers back home. But I do want to secure the oil.
If you read about the history of Donald Trump — I was a civilian. I had absolutely nothing to do with going into Iraq, and I was totally against it. But I always used to say, "If they're going to go in..." — nobody cared that much, but it got written about. "If they're going to go in..." — I'm sure you've heard the statement, because I made it more than any human being alive. "If they're going into Iraq, keep the oil." They never did. They never did. I know Lindsey Graham had a bill where basically we would have been paid back for all of the billions of dollars that we've spent — many, many billions of dollars. I mean, I hate to say it, it's actually trillions of dollars, but many, many billions of dollars. And, by one vote, they were unable to get that approved in the Senate. They had some pretty big opposition from people that shouldn't have opposed, like a president. And they weren't able. If you did that, Iraq would be a much different story today because they would be owing us a lot of money. They would be treating us much differently.
[snip]
Now, I will secure the oil that happens to be in a certain part. But that's tremendous money involved. I would love to — you know, the oil in — I mean, I'll tell you a story. In Iraq — so they spent — President Bush went in. I strongly disagreed with it, even though it wasn't my expertise at the time, but I had a — I have a very good instinct about things. They went in and I said, "That's a tremendous mistake." And there were no weapons of mass destruction. It turned out I was right. I was right for other reasons, but it turned out, on top of everything else, they had no weapons of mass destruction, because that would be a reason to go in. But they had none.
But I heard recently that Iraq, over the last number of years, actually discriminates against America in oil leases. In other words, some oil companies from other countries, after all we've done, have an advantage Iraq for the oil. I said, "Keep the oil. Give them what they need. Keep the oil." Why should we — we go in, we lose thousands of lives, spend trillions of dollars, and our companies don't even have an advantage in getting the oil leases. So I just tell you that story. That's what I heard.
You know what's peculiar? No one has asked Trump publicly what right he has taking someone else's oil.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's not that much oil there in Syria.