“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.”
- Harold Pinter, 2005

“There’s no U.S. armed forces inside of Syria… I believe there’s military activity. But, in terms of a ground presence in Syria, I’m not aware of that.”
- Faran Haq, deputy spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general

“They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil”.
- Donald Trump, 2020

by continuing “to maintain control of the oil fields in Syria, we will deny Assad and Iran a monetary windfall.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham

“Just because a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a skeptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed.”
- Noam Chomsky

It doesn't seem to matter whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.

US occupation troops in Syria's northeastern Jazira region looted 60 tankers of crude oil and transported it through an illegal border crossing into its military bases in Iraq, Syrian state media reported on 4 February...
US troops in Syria have continued to systematically loot the country’s natural resources, including oil, wheat, and barley – transferring the plundered goods to Iraq illegally.

It seems that we've even privatized the ongoing theft. Just last year the Senate voted on a resolution to end our illegal occupation of Syria. It failed overwhelmingly.

On December 7, the Senate voted 13-84, rejecting a resolution to withdraw the US troops.
Since 2016, the resolution disclosed, US troops in Syria have attacked the Syrian government and its allies, including Iranian and Russian fighters, at least 11 times.
Both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations repeatedly launched airstrikes in Syria against government and allied forces.