administration line of non-intervention and "hands off" Iraqi internal affairs, and Bush himself
repeated this line on April 3. But British pressure was about to create an extraordinary reversal,which showed the world that even after the departure of Thatcher, and while he was allegedly at the (^)
height of his glory, Bush was still taking orders from London. On April 5, Bush yielded partially to
the clamor to intervene in favor of the Kurds, who had now been militarily defeated by the Iraqi
army and were seeking refuge in Iran and in the Turkish mountains of southeast Anatolia. On April
7, US planes began air drops of supplies into these Turkish and Iraqi areas. Then, on April 8, Majorrepeated his demand for "safe zone" enclaves for the Kurds to be created and guaranteed by the
coalition in territory carved out of northern Iraq. It was a clear interference in Iraqi internal affairs,
and a clear violation of international law, but the British were backed up by the choplogic
theorizing of French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, who advanced the theory of the
"humanitarian intervention" as a fig-leaf for the sweeping power of wealthy imperialists to trampleon the weak and the starving in the future.
Bush was haunted by the spectre of getting bogged down in endless guerilla warfare in the
mountains of northern Iraq, just as the Soviets had in Afghanistan. On April 13, Bush told an
audience of 2,500 at Maxwell Air Force Base War College in Montgomery, Alabama:
Internal conflicts have been raging in Iraq for many years, and we're helping out, and we're going to
continue to help these refugees. But I do not want one single soldier or airman shoved into a civil
war in Iraq that's been going on for ages. And I'm not going to have that.
"Saddam's continued savagery has placed his regime outside the international order," said Bush. But
"we will not interfere in Iraq's civil war. The Iraqi people must decide their own political future."
[fn 91]
But the British pressure was unrelenting; this was a chance to rewrite international law and to deal acrushing blow to previous concepts of sovereignty. Bush finally harkened to his master's voice. On
April 16, he announced the total reversal of his own policy:
...I have directed the US military to begin immediately to establish several encampments in northern
Iraq where relief supplies for these refugees will be made available in large quantities anddistributed in an orderly way.
Among those he said he had consulted, Bush mentioned Major. But what about Bush's previous
vehement pledges never to take such a step? One timid voice in the press conference ventured to
ask:
Q: Do you feel certain enough of their safety that you feel this is not inconsistent with your earlier
statements about not putting one US soldier's life on the line?
Bush: Yes, I do. I tterms of helping these people. And so some may interpret it that way; I don't. I think it's purelyhink this is entirely different, and I think it's a-- I just feel it's what's needed in
humanitarian, and I think representations have been made as recently as today that they'd be-- you
know, that these people would be safe. So I hope it proves that way. [fn 92]
This decision created an Anglo-American enclave in northern Iraq that expanded during a period ofseveral weeks before stabilizing. US forces left Iraqi territory by July 15, but some of them stayed
behind as part of a very ominous rapid deployment force jointly created by the US, the UK, France,
Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands and based in southeast Turkey. This was called Operation
Poised Hammer (in British parlance, Sword of Damocles), and was allegedly stationed to protect
the Kurds from future attacks by Saddam. Many observers noted that this force was optimally