If you ask President Trump, the United States is simultaneously bringing its troops home from Syria and securing “ the Oil ” (his capitalization) there. In fact, the United States has neither brought home the troops — the military is in the process of pulling out most of them and re-stationing them in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — nor completely left Syria. About 200, or 20 percent of the 1,000 troops in question, are set to remain in southern Syria. So what’s going on? Let’s dive in. Syria has very lucrative crude-oil fields centered primarily in the north and east near its border with Iraq. Before 2011 — when peaceful anti-government demonstrations began, before descending into a bloody civil and proxy war — Syria was producing about 385,000 barrels of crude oil daily, according to David Butter, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North […]