I could definitely see this as a distraction tactic from the economic situation and trying to shore up the dollar.
There's a lot of sense to that line of thought, though I always try to remember that the more people you have in a conspiracy the harder it is to keep secret. This would be a pretty big number of people who'd need to be in on it - the policy makers and advisors who truly think a collapse is imminent or even are just thinking our influence is waning too much, the analysts and advisors who would have had to search the world for an appropriate conflict, the lawmakers who had to be brought on board to do the hearings and the interviews and then cast their votes. All it would take is one Snowden and the whole thing would be out in the open.
Still, that said, the idea makes a chilling kind of sense. War is expensive for a reason - it gives people work to do making bombs and bandages. It keeps the patriotic fervor going so that we hail our soldiers as heroes rather than questioning why they're in the places they're in. It eats up nightly air time that is already crunched for time for actual news (even the "good" shows have only about three or four major stories in each broadcast, with a lot of feel-good, filler crap). It certainly distracts from the debt limit/government funding issues about to hit this and next month, and the complete uselessness of our elected officials in dealing with it, Re-bumbling-cans and Demo-flats alike. It tries to show our country's morals and ethics (ha! OK, the morals and ethics that our schoolbooks say we have) are still relevant on the world stage.
I don't know - maybe, just maybe, our government is really trying to do what they collectively feel is right. I sure wouldn't bet on it, though.