You're counter-supposing that the US goes to war more or less randomly based on how it feels about interesting newspaper articles. Seems unlikely - being outraged is quite easy, I can manage it at least once a week if I go looking for bad news. However, it is quite difficult to sustain an overseas army for extended periods of time and requires reasons, intent and a certain ruthless self interest. It is possible to kill people and see effectively no response [0, 1].
The US public on mass are regularly revealed to be completely horrible. They've looked past countless tragedies because it would be inconvenient to acknowledge them. It happens almost weekly; there is a lot going wrong in the world that the US kinda shrugs off. Much of it their fault to a first or second order approximation. They are totally capable of overlooking 100 murders if they don't also think that there is something to be gained by sending the army out.
Consider the situation vs. Iraq as an example. Powerful people wanted the war. As soon as there was a half-plausible narrative they sent troops in. It wasn't the narrative that led to the going in, the narrative removed a blocker to stopping the political forces that were trying to trigger the war. That is very much the layer of the world where propaganda happens.
EDIT And just to try and articulate myself a bit more clearly, because I distracted myself with the interesting story in [1] - the US has well developed propaganda systems for building these events up into a justification for war that may, or may not, spin up depending on the assessed need of whoever organises the media. The fact that the German propaganda system was inferior to the Anglosphere propaganda system on its home turf doesn't tell us much about the limits of propaganda. The Germans were dealing with an aggressive society [2] that was extremely good at finding a cause for war and then broadcasting it. But nevertheless the underlying cynicism of the English speaking world is very clear if you look for it - the official "why we are doing this" is almost always propaganda over the top of "this will be a profitable venture for the people making the decision to go to war".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 "shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor" -> "All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative" -> "Reagan ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 15, 1983, to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate flights to and from the United States". No war broke out. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
[2] I mean, seriously, the British had the empire that the sun never sets on, the US has the Not An Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets They Are Just Random Military Bases and if you ask they got it by a continuous series of defensive moves. One shudders to think what it would be called if the same thing was done by people with the wrong passport.
The US public on mass are regularly revealed to be completely horrible. They've looked past countless tragedies because it would be inconvenient to acknowledge them. It happens almost weekly; there is a lot going wrong in the world that the US kinda shrugs off. Much of it their fault to a first or second order approximation. They are totally capable of overlooking 100 murders if they don't also think that there is something to be gained by sending the army out.
Consider the situation vs. Iraq as an example. Powerful people wanted the war. As soon as there was a half-plausible narrative they sent troops in. It wasn't the narrative that led to the going in, the narrative removed a blocker to stopping the political forces that were trying to trigger the war. That is very much the layer of the world where propaganda happens.
EDIT And just to try and articulate myself a bit more clearly, because I distracted myself with the interesting story in [1] - the US has well developed propaganda systems for building these events up into a justification for war that may, or may not, spin up depending on the assessed need of whoever organises the media. The fact that the German propaganda system was inferior to the Anglosphere propaganda system on its home turf doesn't tell us much about the limits of propaganda. The Germans were dealing with an aggressive society [2] that was extremely good at finding a cause for war and then broadcasting it. But nevertheless the underlying cynicism of the English speaking world is very clear if you look for it - the official "why we are doing this" is almost always propaganda over the top of "this will be a profitable venture for the people making the decision to go to war".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 "shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor" -> "All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative" -> "Reagan ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 15, 1983, to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate flights to and from the United States". No war broke out. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
[2] I mean, seriously, the British had the empire that the sun never sets on, the US has the Not An Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets They Are Just Random Military Bases and if you ask they got it by a continuous series of defensive moves. One shudders to think what it would be called if the same thing was done by people with the wrong passport.