There is strong, bipartisan opposition to the use of US ground forces in Libya. President Obama did not seek and Congress has not authorized the use of force in Libya. The House voted on June 2 to specify that the president should not deploy ground forces in Libya unless it is to rescue a member of the armed forces in imminent danger. The full Senate has yet to take up the issue.
But policy analysts caution that a gradual expansion of US involvement in Libya is likely to continue, especially if the transition does not go well.
“I don’t think President Obama has a desire to get any more deeply involved in Libya,” says Paul Pillar, a former senior national security analyst, now director of studies at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. “But there will be pressures and debates in all of the Western allies, including the US, about what to do in dealing with a messy situation that was partly – in the sense that we intervened militarily – of our own making.”
“There already was a sort of mission creep in taking an intervention that was rationalized on the basis of preventing supposedly impending slaughter of innocent civilians and quickly turning it into an effort at regime change," he adds. "It will be a natural progression to creep further into nation-building in the post-Qaddafi Libya.”
Most members of Congress are still out of Washington, meeting with constituents or traveling abroad, and aides on both sides of the aisle say that lawmakers are looking to other aspects of American power – diplomacy, training, and technical assistance – to meet immediate needs in Libya. But some are not ruling out a more direct US role, if needed.
“While we join the Libyan people in celebrating this moment, we also know from history that the fall of a dictator does not guarantee the emergence of a successful, stable democracy in its wake,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut in a statement on Sunday.
“For this reason, it is critical for the US to redouble our assistance to and coordination with the Transitional Council,” he added.
