US Company Signs Deal for Syrian Oil

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How 'bout, "No." 

The last thing we need is to further entrench ourselves in Syria by committing to defend a Kurdish autonomous zone. 

Ah yes, another one of those who thinks we should just turn our backs on our allies that lost thousands fighting for us. trump, and his right wing mindless followers, were warned this would happen when they turned their backs on the Kurds, and now it has happened.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.

Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.

Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.

“A catastrophic mistake,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican leader.

“Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Trump said Monday he understood criticism from fellow GOP leaders but disagreed. He said he could also name supporters, but he didn’t.

Pentagon and State Department officials held out the possibility of persuading Turkey to abandon its expected invasion. U.S. officials said they had seen no indication that Turkey had begun a military operation by late Monday."

apnews.com/article/ac3115b4eb564288a03a5b8be868d2e5

Let’s do a review here.

What all seem to be missing is trump pulled many trips out of Syria to lower our footprint there.

We heard loudly from the left that he was a horrible move and the Kurds would be annihilated within a month, guaranteed

Obviously the Kurd autonomous zone remained without us. And my bet is now security will go back up in the area - read us troops.

This was a great success of trumps. And the left was dead wrong here

But we may be going backwards with this deal. But may need the oil.

It sure would be nice if we didn’t have to be there

I’m not sure if that will ever happen.

We would not need their oil if bingo quid pro quo open border joe didn't shut off our oil faucet.
And then on top of that, he did this.

Biden’s move was both political theater and an indulgence of his liberal base. But his hypocrisy was stunning even for a politician who has spent a half-century in Washington. Consider that while the Biden administration is killing a pipeline from which the public could benefit, Biden is promoting a pipeline to enrich both one of the world’s worst dictatorships and a group responsible for thousands of U.S. deaths.

The government has apparently brokered a meeting between the Turkmenistan government and the Taliban for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline to bring Turkmen gas across Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. If this scheme sounds familiar, it should: It was the same deal that now-Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad sought to make with the Taliban in the years before the Sept. 11 terror attacks when he was a consultant for the Unocal Corporation.

Khalilzad’s scheme was bad policy two decades ago, and it is even worse now.

Put aside environmental arguments and consider profit. Freedom House’s latest Freedom in the World report ranks Turkmenistan as among the world’s worst offenders, below even North Korea in terms of freedom and civil liberties. To promote the export of Turkmen gas is to entrench its regime even further. Part of the deal is then paying the Taliban protection money or transit fees for the pipeline transiting Afghan territory. Not only would this undermine the elected Afghanistan government even further, but it would also reward the Taliban for insurgency to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each month. Who needs Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers when the State Department has crafted a scheme to reward the Taliban beyond their wildest dreams?

One issue here is Khalilzad's penchant for using diplomacy as a stepping stone to cut side deals. But the other issue is U.S. strategic interests. Perhaps a misunderstanding of the Taliban agenda was an excuse 20 years ago. It should not be one now. If the Biden administration says no to pipeline jobs in the Midwest, it should not then turn around and help enrich the Taliban to ship Turkmen gas to the Indian Ocean. It is time for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to call his envoy, end this hypocrisy, and stop coddling some of the world’s most anti-American movements.

Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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Great. If these Congressmen think this is a priority, then pass authorization for U.S. troops to be there for this purpose; however, it seems like we haven't learned much over the past 20 years if they're still advocating regime change policies.  As it stands, we're there illegally, and our involvement has been a destabilizing factor. We also don't have a compelling national interest in the overthrow of Assad imo.