While the directorate (Deep State) of the ruling capitalist class wants to continue to occupy a large part of Syria to harass and wear-down Syrians and its allied populations into accepting a different government that is more favorable to the Empire's interests of profit and power, Gowans points to the strategy's weaknesses:
... the US occupation of Syrian territory is kept largely under the radar of public awareness through its infrequent coverage by the mainstream media and minimization as a small scale effort involving “only 2,000 US military personnel,” a miscounting the Pentagon acknowledges. ....I believe that Gowans is correct in his analysis. Thus it follows that it is urgent that we in alternative media prevent their success by influencing our fellow Americans as to the truth about what our criminal masters are doing in Syria, as well as elsewhere in the world.
The vast majority of the citizens of the United States, the UK, France and other Western satellites of the United States, do not benefit in the least from Washington’s long war on Syria, and on the contrary, are disadvantaged by it; they bear its monetary costs. And ordinary Syrians certainly do not benefit either; on the contrary, the war casts them as victims of a blackmail.
US policy, then, rests on untenable foundations. It is illegal and in principle unsupportable by public opinion. These are weaknesses that can be used against Western governments to pressure them to abandon their unlawful, wasteful and morally unconscionable plans for the prolonged infliction of misery on Syrians.
