The PR firm Purpose is working on overthrowing the Assad government of Syria.

From Alternet:

Best known for its work on liberal social issues with well-funded progressive clients like the ACLU and the police reform group, Campaign Zero, the New York- and London-based public relations firm Purpose promises to deliver creatively executed campaigns that produce either a “behavior change,” “perception change,” “policy change” or “infrastructure change.” As the Syrian conflict entered its third year, this company was ready to effect a regime change.

Who funds the campaign?

Though The Syria Campaign claims to “refuse funding from any party to the conflict in Syria,” it was founded and is sustained with generous financial assistance from one of the most influential exile figures of the opposition, Ayman Asfari, the U.K.-based CEO of the British oil and gas supply company Petrofac Limited. Asfari is worth $1.2 billion and owns about one-fifth of the shares of his company, which boasts 18,000 employees and close to $7 billion in annual revenues.

In general, it is because an imperial power such as the US is desperate to maintain its client states.  It must dole out more and more aid and weapons and support in order to keep states which otherwise have little in common with it in its orbit.

Internal forces, such as US weapons makers, influence the government also.

From an interview with Andrew Cockburn in the Dallas Morning News:

Andrew, when people speak cynically about the compromises we make to our own stated values in our relationship with Saudi Arabia, the American relationship, they typically refer to the Saudis’ ability to supply us with oil, and certainly that was the case dating back to the 1940s. But now that the resurgence of domestic fuel extraction has decreased our reliance on that foreign oil, what ties us to the Saudis economically?

A huge amount of money. Well, all sorts of things still. The one that really hits the eye is the enormous trade in weapons from us to them. As I say in the piece, since 2010 … we have sold or signed agreements to sell, it’s now actually topping $112 billion. It was $111 billion when I wrote the article, but they’ve thrown in just over another billion since then. … That leads to all sorts of things, like a huge American military presence … in Saudi Arabia who’s not just protecting the regime, training … all their internal security forces. We train another force that protects the oil installations, and we train the Saudi military. These trainers basically double as arms-sales merchants, because they make it explicitly their job to sell American defense products.

What is Syria about?  Why do members of the US Establishment enable the destruction of Syria and its people, financed by the American taxpayer?

From Jeffrey Sachs:

A widespread – and false – perception is that Obama has kept the US out of the Syrian war. Indeed, the US right wing routinely criticizes him for having drawn a line in the sand for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over chemical weapons, and then backing off when Assad allegedly crossed it (the issue remains murky and disputed, like so much else in Syria). A leading columnist for the Financial Times, repeating the erroneous idea that the US has remained on the sidelines, recently implied that Obama had rejected the advice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to arm the Syrian rebels fighting Assad.

Yet the curtain gets lifted from time to time. In January, the New York Times finally reported on a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under Obama’s orders, provides organizational support and training.

……

Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America’s allies in the anti-Assad effort include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces, including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise sums are not reported.

……

…….America’s two-sided war in Syria is a cynical and reckless gamble. The US-led efforts to topple Assad are not aimed at protecting the Syrian people, as Obama and Clinton have suggested from time to time, but are a US proxy war against Iran and Russia, in which Syria happens to be the battleground.