From the Revolutionary War to Trump’s confrontation with Iran, corporate interests have repeatedly turned military conflict into economic opportunity while democracy pays the cost.
The War Profiteers Won Again
Tom Hall / LA Progressive
(June 19, 2026) — June is busting out all over! Juneteenth is the traditional Independence Day for slaves who got word of the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19th, 1865, only 30 months and 19 days after President Lincoln issued it (but who’s counting?). June 17th marks the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, outside Boston, which showed that the might of an imperial army could be resisted by men who believed in their own rights, on their own land, in contest with mercenaries fighting for the rights of royalty and privilege.
June of 1863 saw battles in the Civil War, including the notable Confederate Victory at Winchester, which laid the groundwork for the battle at Gettysburg, and the battle at Brandy Station which should have warned a more cautious Robert E. Lee about the increasing ability of Union cavalry and the increasing unreliability of cavalry office Jeb Stuart. The battle at Brandy Station is generally seen as the start of Lee’s Gettysburg campaign and its devastating outcome.
Eighty years later, on June 6, 1944, allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, once again testing whether wealthy privilege would prevail against democratic values and governance. The post WW-II lynchings of Black men for the ‘crime” of wearing the uniforms they wore in the war gave some indication that the question remained and remains open.
And now, 80 years after WW-II ended, June 17 marks a new day in the contest between the power of wealth and the power of free government. In early 2026, the corporate profiteers who pull the Donald’s strings, had him start a war with another autocratic, and potentially wealthy country, Iran. No one contends that Iran is in anyway democratic. A small group of violent military men rule, using pretenses of religious fervor, and profit by controlling all aspects of the economy.
History teaches us that businessmen exploited the Revolutionary War by providing shoddy goods and provisions to General Washington’s army. One reason that so many “conservatives” love the Articles of Confederation that preceded the Constitution was that the Articles made profiteering much easier than the Constitution would. History also teaches us that armies on both sides of our Civil War were plagued by profiteers and conmen, eager to exploit whomever they could.
We now know, thanks to the diligent work of educated journalists doing difficult research, that Henry Ford provided trucks used to build Hitler’s war machine into the formidable war machine that Ford trucks were used to fight in WW-II. And that Prescott Bush, father of two pro-war presidents, provided both petroleum and banking services to build Hitler’s war machine. Today’s investment managers call that strategy “hedging,” so that an investor profits no matter which way the battle goes.
More recently, we have seen that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites provide information and communications links useful to both sides in the Russia-Ukraine War. How the links are managed may affect the outcome of the war. Almost certainly, management decisions affect how the corporation profits from the war.
Imagine how the Vietnam War might have turned out if we had had independent satellite operators, like GoogleEarth, looking down at the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. At that time, corporate representatives and Pentagon officials wanting more profits from what was not yet a real “war,” counted on no one being able to contradict U.S. Navy claims about “attacks” by Vietnamese boats. Within weeks, Congressmen began the process of authorizing vast expansions of U.S. Troop presence in Vietnam and surrounding countries, and vast expenditures for every kind of supply and expendable Pentagon purchasing agents could be convinced to buy.
I have mentioned just four of our wars. But there are so many more. One which will live in infamy was Ronald Reagan’s conquest of the non-militant nation of Grenada. What readers may remember about that war was that the Pentagon awarded more medals to soldiers who sat at their Pentagon City desks, writing orders and requisitions than to sailors and soldiers who invaded Grenada. Greasing the wheels had become as just as valiant as driving a landing craft or a general’s jeep in the field.
And so, we approach Iran. Jimmy Carter, whom so many have so derided for so long, was the experienced and retired Navy officer who first embargoed weapons for which Iran had already paid, impounding billions of dollars of Iranian money, stopping a lot of Iran’s military capacity for decades. Limiting Iran’s military abilities also limited the “need” for nations surrounding Iran to buy pricey weaponry and supplies from U.S. war toy makers. NOT good for the bottom line! Not good for “christian” profiteers who wanted a profitable religious war against Islam.
Barak Obama also worked, with the entire world community, to limit Iran’s war making power. Working within a detente between Western “christian” theology and Islamic “Moslem” posturing, President Obama got a deal under which Iran could not develop nuclear weapons and the west got to inspect Iran, constantly, to ensure that Iran was not cheating. The west also got to keep, for the time being, the money which had been seized by that loser Jimmy Carter. Iran, its neighbors, and the U.S. stayed out of a shooting war, although both sides were allowed to keep funding and encouraging their proxies in small territorial wars (If you are a Gazan or West Bank Palestinian reading this, I apologize for calling your genocide a “small territorial war”).
The Carter actions, and the subsequent Obama / world community agreement kept a level of peace. Iran lived under impoverishing sanctions but did not take offensive actions to break out of them. Iranian proxies got weapons from where they could, and Israel got weapons from the U.S. Saudi Arabia and other U.S. client states bought fancy fighter jets but had no one to use them against – until we encouraged Saudia Arabia to try to take over its tiny neighbor Yemen. Even oil sheiks can only buy so many jets, and no ammunition if they don’t use it up.
The Bush I and Cheney/Bush II wars were winding down, after never being as profitable as had been promised. And during the 2024 campaign, the Donald had explicitly promised to increase oil corporations’ profits if they supported him. But that wasn’t happening. And his race-based attacks on immigrants and all people of color were neither popular nor profitable. He needed a war.
Desperate to cling to “christian” voters who were slipping away, and to deliver the profits he had promised corporate sponsors, he needed a war. Or at least a show of strength. So, he ordered Iran’s nuclear capabilities destroyed. By burning through our national supply of super expensive “bunker buster” bombs, and all the supplies and equipment used to deliver them, Donald delivered short term profits to a narrow slice of war profiteers. But he didn’t do much on his promise to the oil corporations. And he didn’t stop people’s worries about his failing economic promises or the growing evidence about the cover up of the Epstein rape and molestation empire, in which he participated.
As coverage of his cover up efforts widened, he needed a war as distraction. Believing that he had destroyed Iran militarily, he grabbed onto Bebe Netanyahu’s promise that war with Iran would be as quick and profitable as Dick Cheney had promised Bush II that war with Iraq would be. Netanyahu needed protection against his own corruption trial and the Donald needed to distract from Jeffrey Epstein. War on Iran was an easy decision and promised to be profitable.
Except that the enemy wasn’t really Iran. Pentagon and intelligence professionals contradicted what corporate zealots and Netanyahu were peddling. Pentagon military experts had mapped out war plans and “games” with Iran. They knew about the Strait of Hormuz and that world oil flows would become major issues. They knew that Netanyahu was selling dishonest promises to a gullible conman. They knew there was nothing quick or easy about attacking Iran.
None of the expertise mattered to the Donald. He sidelined even his Russian connection, Tulsi Gabbard. He had his drunken Pentagon boss, Hegseth, fire or replace every professional office who suggested planning a war. He announced that bombing and other raids had begun during a period of negotiation. This guaranteed to the world that nothing he said about diplomacy could be trusted. He wanted to be seen as a powerful war chief, ready to deliver supply contracts for those willing to pay the most.
The results were predictable. The Iranians, like the Vietnamese, refused to be conquered, refused to have their homeland controlled by a madman worse than their current mullah bosses. As Pentagon professionals had warned, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Because the Donald had publicly bragged that he would lie to them as he desired, and that he would break any diplomatic rules he desired, even U.S. allies turned away. It was our allies, not Iran, who denied Donald use of their air space for attacks on civilian targets across Iran.
As gas and grocery prices soared, farmers couldn’t get fertilizer and U.S. citizens started getting shot for the ‘crimes” of peacefully protesting, Donald and his congressional loyalists started to see the writing on the wall. Donald had depleted the Pentagon’s munition stockpiles, while giving a huge boost to China’s reputation, and delivering record profits to the oil corporations, as promised. And even his devoted followers were showing disgust.
The war had to be ended, or at least an appearance of ending had to be created. So, a “deal” was announced. But it was a secret deal, that even congresspeople couldn’t review. The polls kept dropping. Even his birthday gladiatorial games on the White House lawn didn’t help, especially when one of the low-norm performers insisted on going full race and LGBTQ+ bashing during the event.
So, as he has so often, the Donald just declared victory and walked away. When the text of the deal was finally released, it showed the U.S. abandoning plans to control Iran’s nuclear stockpile; abandoning the fund seizure that jimmy Carter had affected; abandoning the international sanctions President Obama and a united world had imposed; and promising Iran “at least” $300 BILLION in reparation funds for the damage inflicted by Pentagon attacks in under 6 months.
By any measure, as acknowledged by reviewers around the world, it was a total surrender by the U.S. to Iran. Fittingly, it was signed at Versailles Palace in France, the same place the German government signed total surrender papers to end WW-I.
But a total surrender is not a total loss. The corporate profiteers who pull the Donald’s strings and made him do the surrender dance came out just fine. They will charge new, higher prices to rebuild the arsenal that they told the Donald to throw away at Iran. They will restock the munitions that Israel has used during the war. Even as international oil prices drop, our prices at the gas station will not return even close to their pre-war levels. Voters have been distracted from the ongoing work of the Roberts’ Court to end non-White voting rights.
Our Founding Fathers fought at Bunker Hill because they had been economically raped by the East India company and other corporations with corrupt ties to the English king. Their fight for freedom was hindered by businessmen profiting off state militias and Washington’s army. They knew about and tried to protect us from corporate corruption of government when they crafted a government of separate but equal branches.
By the Civil War, corporate influence was once again growing on both sides of the dispute. In the “Gilded Age” after the war, White managers looted the Freedmen’s Bank established to provide financial strength to newly freed Black people and drove it into bankruptcy, stealing the Black community’s funds for White businesses.
Now we are faced with executive and judicial branches of government under control of corporate influencers, flooded with corporate bribe money. Like the farmers and businessmen who had to risk their lives for freedom at Bunker Hill, WE must decide whether to risk our complacency and comfort for the possibility of reclaiming our government, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” We still have the chance of doing that in the midterm elections.
And the names and identities of the pedophile molesters and rapists in the Trump-Epstein Files remain hidden, as the Donald’s personal lawyer now runs the Justice Department.
Tom Hall is a family lawyer in West Los Angeles. He is from Boston, and was raised in Friends Meeting at Cambridge (Quakers) to think that religion was a progressive force. During the Vietnam War, he organized draft counseling centers and worked with groups training people in techniques for disciplined nonviolent demonstrating. After the war, he became just another yuppie working to make a comfortable life. The Bush administration shocked him back into social concerns. Tom can be reached at ProgBlog@aol.com
The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
