What about the US and Syria now?

It is always difficult to keep up with the current president of the United States' policy on Syria. In his press conference yesterday announcing the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Donald Trump said it made no difference to his decision about pulling out troops from Syria. Syria is over, he said. Now leave it to the Russians and Turks and Syrians and whoever, but not Americans, he said. Well fine, but at this very moment a convoy of US armoured vehicles flying the American flag are crossing over from Iraq into northern Syria and heading for the oil wells which Trump has decided belong to the US and not to the Syrian government. Then there are the 300 or so US troops who have been held back somewhere in southern Syria just to be a presence. So a total number of troops of say, around 500-600 or perhaps even more. Is Syria over, Mr President? It doesn't look like it. He ridiculed the idea that the US military would still be serving in Syria in a 100 years. Yet at the same time he gets persuaded by the Pentagon to keep quite a lot of troops in Syria one way or another, having brilliantly come up with that crucial word "oil". It was like a light coming on in Trump's head. Yes, yes, we must preserve the oil. Why shouldn't we benefit after spending so many trillions of dollars on fighting wars we don't like or want? That seems to be his thinking. Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, who is right in the middle of the shall-we-shan't-we have troops in Syria conversation, would surely have emphasised the importance of stopping Isis from getting their hands on the oil wells again. I can't believe he and General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, would have recommended the US control the oil in order to bring in revenue for the US Treasury Department. But Trump clearly thought that would be a by-product of havng US troops defending the wells from Isis. The Russians have already accused Trump of oil "banditry". Anything Moscow says about banditry makes one laugh, with their sort of reputation for exactly that in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine. But it does make me slightly uncomfortable to say the least that Trump seems to think it's America's right to grab some of the Syrian oil. Especially when his overall policy is supposed to be to leave Syria to its own devices and bring all US troops home to their families. Anyway the convoy of troops is on the way and I can't see them returning to their families in time for Christmas. The Kurds who felt abandoned by the US threw potatoes and rocks at the armoured vehicles when they were leaving northern Syria for Western Iraq last week. They must be as confused as everyone else when they see the same armoured vehicles popping back again over the border heading for their new mission and presumably rejoining the Kurdish-led forces who have been guarding the oil wells from Isis until now. Perhaps the Kurdish people in the region will throw roses and forget-me-nots at the returning US convoy.