Prologue: In February 7, 2018, Kurdish-led troops backed by a few dozen American special operations forces were protecting a Conoco natural gas field facility taken away from the so-called Islamic State when they saw hostile troops massing for a pitched battle. But they weren’t ISIS forces, they were soldiers from the Assad regime backed by Russian mercenaries. As fighting began, Syrian tanks and artillery closed in on the Kurdish and American positions, and the Americans called in devastating airpower. Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called for the attacking force to be annihilated, as he later told the Senate, “and it was.” In the end, as many as 300 of the attackers were killed. In any case, they retreated, never to return.
But that was then. Today, the apparent logic of Trump administration policy is to find a way to make the Syrians and Russians pay for those oil and gas fields, not with blood, but with money.
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