President Trump has executed a policy U-turn on Syria. He’s now tasking U.S. forces that he’d promised to withdraw from there with a new mission: securing the oil fields of southeastern Syria.
“This doesn’t violate any law, in my view,” Graham declared following Trump’s remarks. “This is a win-win: The SDF will get more money if we can modernize the oil fields. We’re not going over there to enrich America — we’re over there to help our allies, deny our enemy resources that will allow them to get stronger over time and finally — and this is OK — to lower the cost to us.”
“[Trump] makes no mention of who owns the oil, and that seems like a fairly key question,” says James Graham Stewart, a law professor at the University of British Columbia. “The second question is what exactly is Trump planning to do with the oil.” Stewart cites numerous international agreements binding the U.S., including the Fourth Geneva Convention, that define the taking of goods during wartime without the owner’s permission as pillaging — a war crime.
Full article at NPR
Article submitted by Great Gazoo
