The American economy will eventually emerge from this crisis significantly weaker, largely because of its now-inescapable dependence on imported oil

Nothing better captures the debilitating nature of America's dependence on imported oil than President Bush's humiliating recent performance in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He quite literally begged Saudi King Abdullah to increase the kingdom's output of crude oil in order to lower the domestic price of gasoline. "My point to His Majesty is going to be, when consumers have less purchasing power because of high prices of gasoline—in other words, when it affects their families, it could cause this economy to slow down," he told an interviewer before his royal audience. "If the economy slows down, there will be less barrels of [Saudi] oil purchased."

Needless to say, the Saudi leadership dismissed this implied threat for the pathetic bathos it was. The Saudis, indicated Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, would raise production only "when the market justifies it." With that, they made clear what the whole world now knows: The American bubble has burst—and it was oil that popped it. Thus are those with an "oil addiction" (as President Bush once termed it) forced to grovel before the select few who can supply the needed fix.

Have we become the clingons?

You mean the same oil we have always been dependent on? Give me a fricken break.