> But the real "because" is because the dealer didn't remove the decal, not because it ended up in Syria.

In a causal sense, the ending up in Syria seems to be a key actual cause, as does the fact that the decal was still present.

Both are probably key points legally, too, as one is the alleged omission, and the other the alleged mechanism of harm, both of which are important to the legal action.

I guess it's because this fallacy is not relevant to the topic. The association of "after" with "because" in cases like these is not about fallacious reasoning, it's because particular two things were chosen and put together to form a headline, and it doesn't make sense to create a headline like this if you only want to connect the two things with a temporal relationship (one came after another).