“U.S. politicians must muster the courage to scrap the fable of energy independence once and for all. If they continue to lead their people toward the mirage of independence and forsake the oasis of interdependence and cooperation, only disaster will result.” Those are the words of Saudi Arabia’s Turki al-Faisal, in a 2009 article hectoring “misguided” U.S. politicians who promote American energy independence from Saudi Arabia. (Saudi Arabia is our second largest oil supplier.) This, wrote Turki, a former ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom, is “political posturing at its worst.”

Don’t you just love lectures in democracy from potentates of religious dictatorships where women can neither drive nor vote? But in President Obama, it looks as if Turki has found his turkey: A president with the Saudi idea of “courage” to keep the United States on the Saudi reservation — sorry, “oasis” — of interdependence and cooperation” (ka-ching).