US lawmakers rebuke Obama over Libya

Rep. Dennis Kucinich © AFP/File Tim Sloan

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – In a symbolic but scathing rebuke to President Barack Obama, the US House of Representatives on Friday rejected a resolution authorizing US military action in Libya for one year.

Lawmakers voted 295-123 to defeat the measure and and moved to take up a second resolution aimed at sharply reducing the US role in NATO-led, UN-mandated operations against Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi’s forces.

It was the first time that the House rejected authorizing US military action since April 1999, when it repudiated then-president Bill Clinton’s air campaign against Serbia in the conflict over Kosovo.

“We are disappointed by that vote. We think that now is not the time to send the kind of mixed message that it sends,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard the presidential Air Force One airplane
.

“The writing is on the wall for Colonel Kadhafi. Now is not the time to let up,” he said.

Seventy of the White House’s Democratic allies broke with Obama to help defeat the measure after a bitter debate shaped by the US public’s deep war weariness after a decade of conflicts, notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We don’t have enough wars going on?” thundered Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, who has played a leading role in opposing the US role in Libya.

“This war is a distraction. Our flailing economy demands the full attention of Congress and the president,” he said, as the House defied a last-ditch appeal from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a warning from NATO’s chief.

Just eight Republicans backed the resolution, amid deep anger in both parties at Obama’s decision not to seek congressional permission for launching a military operation within the 60-day window required by the 1973 War Powers Act.

Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said she did not support what she called a “dangerous” withdrawal from NATO operations but called Obama’s strategy adrift.

Ros-Lehtinen warned against giving the House’s “blessings” to “an apparently open-ended commitment with goals that remain only vaguely defined” even as the conflict neared the 100-day mark.

But Democratic House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who called the Kosovo vote “one of the darkest days” of his time in office, warned lawmakers risked straining Washington’s ties overseas.

“The message will go to Moamer Kadhafi, the message will go to our NATO allies, the message will go to every nation of the world that America does not keep faith with its allies,” he said.

The House was expected to approve a measure aiming to cut off funding for US military operations except for tasks in support of NATO, like aerial refueling, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, planning, or search and rescue.

That measure, which meant to halt direct combat operations like drone strikes and bombings, was expected to die in the Democratic-led Senate.

Lawmakers assailed Obama’s failure to get their permission, citing the war powers measure and the US Constitution that makes him the military’s commander-in-chief but reserves for Congress the power to declare war.

“The president is becoming an absolute monarch, and we must put a stop to that right now if we don’t want to become an empire instead of a republic,” said Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler.

“Yes, the president should have come to us early, should have come to us at the very beginning, and allowed Congress to carry out its constitutional obligations,” said Democratic Representative John Garamendi.

But US forces are acting under a UN mandate “to defend and protect” Libyan civilians, and “we need to provide the president with the necessary powers to carry out that obligation in a very limited period of time,” he added.

The debate came as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that the Congress risked “damaging” the alliance’s efforts but said he was “confident” they would not.

The United States joined Britain and France in attacking Kadhafi’s forces on March 19 in a UN-authorized mission to protect civilians as the regime attempted to crush an uprising sparked by the regional “Arab Spring.”

The United States withdrew into a supporting role when NATO took command of the mission on March 31.

© AFP — Published at Activist Post with license