You had me at "fuck you"

Exceptionally obnoxious article by Thomas Friedman:

But while the world appears poised to give Obama a generous honeymoon, there lurks a much more important question: How long of a honeymoon will Obama give the world?

To all those Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Indians, Africans and Latin Americans who are e-mailing their American friends about their joy at having “America back,” now that Obama is in, I just have one thing to say: “Show me the money!”

Don’t just show me the love. Don’t just give me the smiles. Your love is fickle and, as I said, it will last about as long as the first Obama airstrike against an Al Qaeda position in Pakistan. No, no, no, show me the money. Show me that you are ready to be Obama stakeholders, not free-riders — stakeholders in what will be expensive and difficult initiatives by the Obama administration to keep the world stable and free at a time when we have fewer resources.

Examples: I understand any foreigner who objected to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the gross mishandling of the postwar. But surely everyone in the world has an interest in helping Obama, who opposed the war, bring it to a decent and stable end, especially now that there is a chance that Iraq could emerge as the first democracy, albeit messy, in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. Obama was against how this Iraq war started, but he is going to be held responsible for how it ends, so why don’t all our allies now offer whatever they can — money, police, aid workers, troops, diplomatic support — to increase the odds of a decent end in Iraq? Ditto Afghanistan.

Look, Tom, after inflicting 8 years of the most incompetent administration in the history of the world, ever, you could do well to show a little humility. You do not get to go straight back to being the leaders of the free world. After 8 years of imperial foreign policy, flaunting of civil rights, torture, unilateral pursuit of national over global interest, not to mention the little matter of an illegal war waged on false pretenses. A war, let us not forget, which you supported, Tom. After all of this, you, the US, need to show us, The Rest of the World, the love. We need to see that you are back to being a serious nation again. You have a lot to prove. You have a lot to live up to. If you want our support and our money and our troops, you have to come asking for them. And if we say no, you are going to have to eat the fact that the administration whom you elected, at least once, is to blame. 

In short: get off your high and mighty exceptionalist horse, stop writing stupid shit like this and look your friends in the eye again.