It's easy:

1. Start with a conflict where most people don't know the specifics
2. Establish that the State Department side of the conflict is The Right Side To Be On with wall-to-wall favorable reporting
3. Bury negative stories where few look, if you run them at all
4. Let the conflict simmer indefinitely

After the last step, most people still don't know the specifics of the situation because you never really informed them and they have other priorities than a war far away that they perceive they have no effect on. They see a story every month or so about another arbitrarily large amount of money getting sent overseas and it just blends into the background; they've seen that story countless times about many countries.