Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left.
This article really consists of two essays: 1) an analysis and exposition of what people outside of the US refer to as "bourgeois democracy", and 2) how the latter influences our policies toward Syria. Essay #1 is Gowans' most important contribution. I regard it as a "must read".
Bourgeois democracy can also be described as "capitalist democracy" because the capitalist class created this fake form of democracy after they took control of the US and France during their revolutions and more gradually in Britain. It became the model that all capitalist countries at least aspire to. This form was a product of capitalist class rule disguised as democracy because of the early embryonic capitalist classes need for the support of the lower classes (peasants, laborers, skilled craftsman, etc) to overturn the rule of monarchs and aristocracy. Thus the lower classes were induced to support the capitalist revolutionaries with vague promises of "freedom" and the rule of law celebrated with such slogans as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". What they really seriously advocated was the sanctity of private property.
Gowans essay #1 provides a very concise understanding of how the capitalist class rules the US behind the facade of "democracy".