It's very bothering when the actions of a country (especially in the past, where involvement or support in any decisions is impossible) are applied directly to a person or people. Saying "we attacked" or "we won the war" in reference to a military or diplomatic action of their country makes no sense when the majority of people included in "we" consists of uninvolved parties, which is the case most of the time. It's a psychological issue intertwined with patriotism and the need to assert country pride or superiority. SNL made fun of this in a skit related to the death of Osama Bin Laden in which characters say "we killed Osama" and another character states that those characters had nothing to do with Osama's death.
