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 trample on 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 a crushing 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 and distributed 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 think this is entirely different, and I think it's a-- I just feel it's what's
needed in terms of helping these people. And so some may interpret it that way; I don't. I
think it's purely 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 of several 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