



When asked if the Baghdadi operation—which was complicated by Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from northern Syria—gave him second thoughts about that withdrawal, he said it was about the oil (bolded emphasis mine):

Look, we don’t want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years. They have been fighting for hundreds of years. We’re out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil. Now, we may have to fight for the oil. That’s OK. 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 will negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it, if we think it’s fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly.

When asked who else he wanted to thank for their counsels on the Baghdadi operation, Trump briefly mentioned Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, then expounded on oil and the companies he’d like to use to distribute it, because the U.S. deserves war spoils:

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 ExxonMobil 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. 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—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.

When asked about the pitfalls of his Syria withdrawal, Trump argued that the lives of people in the Middle East were less valuable to him than securing and extracting fossil fuels for profit. “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 will tell you a story in Iraq,” he said. “I don’t have a Syria pullout.” He continued:

I just don’t want to guard Turkey and Syria for the rest of our lives. I mean, I don’t want to do it. It’s very expensive. It’s very dangerous. They have been fighting for centuries. I don’t want to have my people, 2,000 men and women, or 1,000, or 28. We had 28 guarding. I said, I don’t want them there anyway. I don’t want them. 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 in 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.

Trump’s oil obsession isn’t entirely his fault: His military advisers, already spinning from having indulged his ill-informed edicts on Korean military exercises, Iranian strike plans, the Space Force, transgender service members, deployments to the Mexico border, and a military parade, now contended with a disastrous Syria withdrawal that endangered U.S. troops and fostered criminal atrocities by invading forces. So they pleaded to keep U.S. troops in place by appealing to Trump’s penchant for petroleum, saying the derricks and fields needed to be protected from enemies. “This is like feeding a baby its medicine in yogurt or applesauce,” one U.S. official said—a distressing comment on the weakness of civilian controls over the military under a proven half-wit civilian commander.