U.S. Lawmakers Reject Resolution Authorizing Libya Military Action

In a symbolic but scathing rebuke to President Barack Obama, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday rejected a resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Libya for one year.

Lawmakers defeated the measure with 295 voting against and only 123 for, and moved to take up a companion resolution aimed at sharply reducing the U.S. role in NATO-led, U.N.-mandated operations against Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's forces.

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

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

"We don't have enough wars going on? The war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, we need one more war?" thundered Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, who has played a leading role in opposing the U.S. 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 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a warning from NATO's chief.

Just eight Republicans backed the resolution, as members of both parties angrily denounced 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 Moammar Gadhafi, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. forces are acting under a U.N. 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 Gadhafi's forces on March 19 in a U.N.-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.