Yet another Trump reversal on Syria

First Donald Trump orders the Pentagon to withdraw all US troops from northeastern Syria. Then he says a couple of hundred or so will stick around to guard the Syrian oil fields in the region to stop a reemerging Isis from getting their hands on them to boost their funds, and now the White House has a new plan: to keep FIVE HUNDRED US troops, plus tanks and armoured vehicles, to protect the oil and presumably to stop anyone, including the Syrians, Iranians or Russians, from selling the oil. It's topsy-turvy decision-making. Are the Americans going to keep the oil and sell it on the open market? I'm all for stopping Isis from seizing back the oil wells, but these wells belong to Syria. Gross though the Syrian regime may be, the oil is theirs and, I assume, necessary for boosting the Syrian economy and helping to power electricity. Does the US have the right to grab this oil? But that's another issue. The point I'm trying to make is: what is Trump up to? Withrawing all troops and then keeping 500 of the 1,000 for oil well protection is bizarre to say the least. I'm sure the Pentagon and the CIA argued relentlessy for this outcome, fearful that Isis would come back and once again sell oil on the black market as they did before when they were running their caliphate. In fact, through middlemen, much of the oil actually got sold to the Syrian regime. As soon as oil was mentioned, Trump was persuaded. But how will this fit in with his desire to get the hell out of Syria and leave the mess to Turkey, Syria, Iran and the Russians? The 500 plus tanks and all the paraphernalia needed to sustain such a force in a hot desert area for, possibly, years, will be hugely expensive. They will have to be rotated every nine-to-twelve months which means another 500 back home have to start training and preparing. And so it goes on. What this back-and-forth decision-making shows is that there is no long-term, proper planning being carried out, and the Pentagon is in the middle in a total muddle. Mark Esper, US Defence Secretary, announced to the world that 300 or so of the troops leaving northeast Syria would set up home in western Iraq as a counter-Isis anti-terror force, only to be snubbed by his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad who told him: "No you can't. I want all these troops out of Iraq within four weeks." How humiliating was that for Esper and for General Mark Milley, his new chairman of joint chiefs? Esper bizarrely explained that it had never been his plan to keep the 300 troops in western Iraq for an "interminable" length of time. But four weeks!!! I don't think that was what he had in mind. So where will they go? Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Qatar? No, what's the point? There are enough US troops in these places already, and anyway these are highly experienced anti-Isis special operations troops. There's no reason to have them sitting around in Kuwait or Qatar. So presumably they will go home. Humiliating and embarrassing for those poor guys. Unless, of course, they just turn around and go back into northeastern Syria to start guarding those oil wells. These elite Green Berets must be wondering what the hell is going on.