Daniel Henninger discovers that Putin holds the exact same views of U.S. foreign policy as he does:

What would have made Mr. Putin’s eye jump was the decision by George Bush’s successor not just to leave Iraq but without leaving a residual U.S. military presence to help the new government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It is possible that Putin thought that the decision not to leave some U.S. forces in Iraq was surprising, but I’m not sure why he would. For one thing, the Iraqi government wouldn’t accept the conditions that the administration wanted, and keeping U.S. forces in Iraq wouldn’t have served any purpose except to give militias and terrorists additional targets. This beside the point. It’s not clear why Moscow would care very much one way or the other if the U.S. had kept a residual force in Iraq. If it had, the U.S. would still be embroiled in the ongoing violence there, Americans would still be killing and getting killed in order to prop up a semi-authoritarian ruler, and presumably Washington would have even fewer resources and less political capital to get involved elsewhere in the world than it does now. Nothing says resolve like persisting in a pointless war indefinitely.

Henninger is just pretending that Putin shares his views about the decision to withdraw from Iraq because he thinks this will help vindicate his terrible position in favor of continuing the Iraq war. He does the same thing with Syria, assuming that Putin viewed the decision not to attack just as Henninger did:

Mr. Obama accepted and stood down from bombing Assad. Six months later Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed Crimea.

In Henninger’s strange world, Russia would not have done what it did in Ukraine if the U.S. had started attacking one of its clients half a year ago. I realize that this is what Syria hawks now feel compelled to say to defend their desire to get the U.S. into another war, but it’s just painfully stupid. Had the U.S. started bombing Syria last year, our forces might very well still be fighting there today, and Russia would have a new reason to lash out against a “pro-Western” neighbor. Seizing Crimea has been to some extent belated payback for Kosovo (hence the mocking references to Kosovo in the official justifications), so do we really think that launching another air war against another Russian client would have made Moscow less inclined to act as it has?

It’s a garbage argument, but it is a perfect example of the tendency I described in the last post: hawks imagine that foreign governments share their interpretations of Obama’s actions, and then lamely “explain” the other governments’ subsequent actions accordingly. The advantage in doing this is that it requires absolutely no evidence that the foreign leaders believe these things or that they have acted on those beliefs. All that is required is to repeat some hackneyed partisan line, claim that a foreign leader holds the same view, and then assert a causal connection. The problem with this kind of argument is that it relies on making transparently false and ridiculous claims.