We will soon learn whether we can rely on our "traditional allies"

For seven years of war, we have been told that our "traditional allies" would help us more if only our president were more consultative and less, well, detestable. Well, we are about to learn whether that hypothesis is true, or if it has been nothing more than a Democratic attack point and a nifty excuse for other countries to abdicate their responsibilities to the Atlantic alliance. Thomas Friedman calls them out in his column this morning:

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.

TagerHawk

Don't worry, I'm getting an armband.