Pentagon spokesghoul Sabrina Singh was asked, “We’ve bombed them five times now… If this isn’t war, what is war?” She laughed. Not a funny question, but she laughed ghoulishly and said, “Great question… we do not seek war, we are not at war with the Houthis [Ansar Allah],” as if that explained anything. It doesn’t explain anything. But this person, contractually, cannot explain anything. Her job is obfuscation, not clarification. Asking the Pentagon ‘what’s war’ is like asking a fish about water, except the water is blood. It’s just what they’re swimming in. They’re so deep in war they can’t even perceive it in front of them.

The Hypocritical Hegemon of America likes to pretend like it’s not an Empire at all, but at this point, why listen to them? The only reason to attend one of these press conferences is to throw shoes at them. If you want to know what’s happening, just look at what’s happening. America has dozens of bases around the Middle East to wage war. It encircles the place with aircraft carriers and destroyers to wage war. It arms the genocidal state of ‘Israel’ to divide and conquer. Its troops occupy Syria, its ships bomb Yemen, its airships bomb Iraq, it is at constant war across the region. Everyone that isn’t militarily occupied is besieged or under attack. The only thing confusing is what peace is, war is so persistent. America has been at war in the Middle East my entire life.

They’ve been bombing Yemen for so long that Mohammad Ali Al-Houthi said, “We do not see confrontation with the American or the British as anything but life, for life is in confronting these tyrants and arrogant ones in the world.” How many generations have grown up like this, under constant America oppression? Many Hamas (Al Qassam) fighters are the orphans of previous offenses. By proxy or by great power, when your parents are killed, what’s the difference. Living (or more specifically, dying) like this wholly unnatural to the native population, but considered America’s deathright. They got the oil, we get the spoils, it’s beneath mention. Within America, it’s never once questioned what they’re doing in the Middle East at all, which is the most important question.

The answer is the same reason as for any war, the spoils, with stories about stolen wives or savage savages (re: terrorism) as mere cover. American Empire is swimming in massive amounts of oil, which is why the oil-rich region is kept swimming in blood. It’s simply how they keep their aircraft carriers and hard graft careers afloat. The US military is the single largest consumer (and emitter) of fossil fuels and it needs the oil to grease the military-industrial machine. The colony started with slave energy and now requires energy slaves galore. It needs to wage war in the Middle East to wage war at all, it’s a literally vicious cycle.

America is at so much war in the Middle East that it really does become hard to define, especially for the brain-bleeds in the Pentagon. Is it war if you’re killing just natives or slaves, as America has been doing uninterrupted in the Middle East for decades, and in its own stolen land for centuries? Isn’t that just… culling or something you do to animals (and God help the animals)? Is siege warfare even warfare, especially if you do it through bureaucrats rather than barricades? Is it war at all if other people are dying? Isn’t that just… nothing?

The reason the war questions are emerging now is that Americans are dying. This nominally raises the stakes. But which Americans? Three Black soldiers have just died in Syria/Jordan and the ‘volunteer’ army is primarily made up of debt slaves. Rich people’s children don’t get drafted so, fundamentally, what do they care, besides thanking these people for their ‘service’ while gutting their veterans services? Do these deaths count as war if the ruling class doesn’t actually give a shit? If three fall in Jordan and none of them went to the Ivy League, does it make a sound? That seems to be the basic calculation. And it’s still come up zero. No war to see here.

US soldiers dying is only relevant as a casus belli for more war, to get more of them killed. Business runs the show, and that’s the business. America waging war on other people is so normal that it blends into the background. Especially for people within the military-industrial complex, it’s imperceptible. It’s literally business as usual. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Hence it’s only natural that the embarrassing sell-out Singh laughs at the question ‘what is war?’ Why would someone at the Pentagon be thinking about something so simple, when all the money’s in complexity? American elites have long since discovered that there’s more money in losing wars than winning them, and far less red tape in never declaring them at all. Thus they can circumvent their impotent Congress, bribe anybody relevant, and get the spoils without spoiling their reputation.

Blood is just the water these people swim in, and oil is what floats their aircraft carriers. Of course this isn’t war to them. It’s just existence. Asking someone in the American state “what’s war” is like asking a fish “how’s the water?” “What the fuck is water?” the fish reply back. They really don’t understand the question.