Now, you can argue that energy independence is an impossible goal, you can argue that government intervention is the wrong way to go about it, and I'm as principled a free trader as you can get, but simply saying “Protectionism Bad. Free trade Good.” doesn't nothing to rebut their energy policy. It's like saying the candidates' education policy is bad because drugs should be legalized.

“It is important to understand that energy independence does not mean closed borders or economic isolation. Energy independence will be achieved by producing abundant, clean and affordable domestic energy through new technology that will enable all countries to do the same. The path to American Energy Independence leads to global energy independence.”
http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

But ridiculing energy independence is, for many libertarians and so-called “conservatives,” just a way to pooh-pooh the many manifest benefits of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Henderson acts as if people only make one valid argument for such a reduction: we might get cut off.

That is in fact one of the weakest arguments, one that the presidential candidates have never made, to my knowledge, and as such reveals it as Henderson's straw man and red herring.

Let him answer his opponents' strongest arguments, not their weakest ones, or the ones they rarely if ever deploy.

Yeah, except that for some reason “energy independence” for Sen. Obama extends to “we can't allow ourselves to become dependent on cheap Brazilian sugar ethanol.”

Going back to the example:
We do not need to be “Banana Independent”, Car Ind, etc. But if we are Zimbabwe and are not food independent then something is clearly wrong and there are countless other examples where restrictions are blocking the full effects of free trade.

Here in the USA, we seem to block what resources we do have from getting to market like ANWR.

With all due respect, these definitions are so simplistic as to be strawmen.

A more sensible defintion is here:

http://www-cta.ornl.gov/cta/Publications/Report…

“For all conceivable world market oil conditions, the cost of oil dependence to the US economy will be so small that they will have no effects on our economic, military or foreign policy.”

This author argues that this goal would be acheived if oil imports are equal to or less than 1% of GDP. Oil imports as a percentage of GDP are graphed here:

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/243/2888/640/oil…

You can draw your own conclusions. But the notion of reducing oil imports has merit. Consider first that imports are partly necessitated by excessive restrictions on drilling. If the government got out of the way in the United States, the result would presumably be lower and more stable prices worldwide, as well as greater independence. Henderson talks about the oil production in the middle east being inefficient, and notes the futility of embargos. But that misses the real problem – look at Iraq, which has scads of oil, that hasn't been, and still isn't being exported, not because of conscious policies, but because of ethnic strife, repressive governments, and international policies.

There are good reasons to dramatically cut oil imports, and good reasons to believe that substantial cuts could be accomplished without unacceptable consequences. Many of the strategies to decrease imports favor free markets. Henderson is right that nothing comes without a cost, but his simplistic definitions grossly exaggerate the costs.