There is a general assumption within in the Washington DC Villagers crowd, the officialdom and media, that anything good happening in the world, happens because they did something, while anything bad happening, happens because someone else did something.
The usual way to do this is to assume that correlation is a sign for causation. If A happens while B happens and the result is good then whatever the U.S. did, A or B, must be the cause of the result. If the result is bad then anything someone else, likely the villian of the year, did, A or B, must be the cause of the result.
This is how we get stories about how the Egyptian revolution happened because the U.S. gave money to train a few activists and because of U.S. social media services. Does anyone serious really believes that millions, most of whom likely have no Internet access at all, take to the streets because a few activist learned to formulate Twitter one-liners?
This general way of Villager thinking sometimes leads to rather comical reports for which we find an fine example today in a NYT piece on an arrest in Pakistan:
A Pakistani intelligence official said in Karachi Tuesday night that the operative was arrested in the Gulshen-i-Iqbal area of the city on May 4 or May 5, just two days after the American raid that killed bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad.
The army said the operative was of Yemeni descent.
“The arrest of al-Makki is a major development in unraveling the al Qaeda network in the region,” the Pakistani army said in a statement.
The arrest of the al Qaeda operative appeared to be the result of a pledge by Pakistan and the United States Senator, John Kerry, on Monday that the two sides would mount joint operations against important militants in Pakistan.
“It was also agreed that the two countries will work together in any future actions against high-value targets in Pakistan,” the statement said.
An arrest happened on May 4 or May 5. But it "appeared to be the result" of a Kerry visit on Monday, May 12?
In the Villagers world, time seems to be a two way road. The Pakistanis arrested someone which is good, so it must have been some Villager's action that caused this. A correlation must be found that can then be constructed into a causation. But as there wasn't an correlation, one has to be constructed no matter how much such construction defies any logic. Then the constructed correlation is interpreted as causation.
In general the scheme is a bit more subtle than the example above. But it holds. Self congratulation for any positive outcome, damning someone else for anything less. Spoiled children who lack consciousness of themselves and others.