“Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again. The Crusades consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action. Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against ‘Islamic terrorism’ … supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term ‘Islamo-fascism’, serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while also upholding the tenets of ‘Western democracy’ and the ‘free market’ as the only alternative for these countries….

“Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses three quarters of the world’s oil reserves. ‘Axis of evil’, ‘rogue States’, ‘failed nations’, ‘Islamic terrorists’: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America’s ‘war on terror’. They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil….

“Vilification of the enemy is part and parcel of Eurasia energy geopolitics. It is a direct function of the geographic distribution of the World’s oil and gas reserves. If the oil were in countries occupied predominantly by Buddhists or Hindus, one would expect that US foreign policy would be directed against Buddhists and Hindus, who would also be the object of vilification.”

Michel Chossudovsky in Global Research, 4 January 2007