Regarding Deployment of United States Armed Forces in Libya

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I do thank both Speaker Boehner and Representative Kucinich for bringing these resolutions and bringing this issue to the floor because I completely agree that this is an issue that Congress should debate, discuss, and should ultimately express its opinion on. We have not done that. We are now past 90 days that this mission has been going on in Libya, and I feel we should have brought this up much sooner.

Now, I would prefer a much cleaner resolution that simply came out and made a resolution of approval of the President's mission and of the mission that we and NATO have undertaken in Libya and gave Members the chance to vote it up or down. In that sense, Mr. Kucinich's resolution is much more straightforward. It's a resolution of disapproval, but, again, it gives us the opportunity to at least debate the issue and express the will of Congress.

I do, however, oppose Mr. Boehner's resolution. I also oppose Mr. Kucinich's resolution because I don't think we should pull away from this mission, should pull out of what NATO is doing and the very important work that is going on in Libya.

Mr. Boehner's resolution doesn't do any of that, but it does rather boldly state that the President has not made a case for the mission in Libya, and I very strongly disagree with that assessment.

Now I will agree--and Mr. McKeon and I share the frustration--that prior to the launching of this mission, there was an inadequate amount of communication between the President and this Congress, indeed, between the President and the American people, explaining the reasons for getting into that mission; but since that time the President has made it very clear why we went into Libya.

We had a unique situation. I do not believe the American military should intervene in every conflict in every country. In fact, I don't believe it should intervene in almost any of them. It takes a unique set of circumstances to call for that intervention; and in Libya we had, I believe, that unique set of circumstances.

Number one, we had broad international support. The U.N., NATO, the Arab League all looked at that situation and said intervention was necessary.

Number two, we had a clear humanitarian crisis. There was no doubt at the time that we intervened that if we had not, Muammar Qadhafi would have slaughtered his own people and reasserted control over Libya. He made it clear that is what he was going to do. It was clear that the people rising up for the legitimate opportunity to be heard in their government did not have the power and the force to stop him. We did.

If we had not acted, there is no question that Muammar Qadhafi would be back in charge of Libya, and we would bear at least some piece of the responsibility--at least that is the way the rest of the world would have looked at it. We in the United States had the power and the force to stop a humanitarian catastrophe and chose not to act.

And that's one of the most critical elements in deciding whether or not to intervene: Can we intervene in a successful way? Yes, there are many countries throughout the world that face crises right now, in Syria, in Sudan, in the Congo, a whole bunch of places. But most of those places--in fact in all of those--there is no clear military mission that we could accomplish and achieve. In Libya, there was. If we intervened, we could stop Qadhafi from regaining control of his entire country.

At the time we understood there was no guarantee that that would mean that he would be driven from power immediately, but we could at least stop him from doing that. It was a humanitarian crisis that our actions could prevent. I think it made sense, and I think the President has clearly articulated that.

So for the Congress to pass a resolution saying they have no earthly idea what the President is doing in Libya simply means that they haven't been paying attention for the last couple of months. It has been made clear.

Now, I think it is appropriate that we ask the President to regularly keep in touch with us, let us know where the mission is going. I supported the resolution that said no ground troops in Libya. I think that is a step too far. I don't think that is something that would clearly be able to be accomplished militarily, so I do think that's appropriate.

But the part of this resolution that I must oppose is the part that says the President has made no national security case for why we should be involved in Libya. I believe that he has, and I don't think we should support a resolution saying otherwise. To have simply allowed Libya to fall apart and not helped a people that we could clearly help, that were legitimately calling for greater freedom and greater opportunity, I think, would have been a mistake.

So I will oppose the Boehner resolution, and I will also oppose the Kucinich resolution because I don't believe we should pull out of the mission. But again, I thank all of those involved for bringing this debate to the House floor so that we can have that debate so that we in Congress can assert our authority and express our opinion on this very, very important issue.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of Washington. The President has said from the outset that our role in this mission will be limited; limited but critical. We are not committing troops, we are not committing the full force of the U.S. military, but what we are contributing, as Mr. Moran said, is absolutely critical to the success of the mission. We are supporting our NATO allies in making sure that this mission is carried out in a very limited and very critical way.

I just want to emphasize again that Muammar Qadhafi is not someone who is in the best national security interests of the United States of America. He has a long, long history of weapons of mass destruction, of supporting terrorist groups, of committing terrorist acts against United States citizens, and of in general being an unstable and destabilizing figure. When the people of Libya decided to rise up to throw him out, it was a very appropriate thing for them to do.

Now we all wish that Mr. Qadhafi would have gone quietly and simply--that certainly would have been the easier way to go--but he didn't. And to protect those people who have legitimate aspirations for a better government, we needed to intervene militarily to assist.

Now I think in this instance the best thing about this is we were not alone. The Arab League, the United Nations, NATO, took the lead. There is a great deal of instability throughout the Middle East and that is unquestionably in the national security interests of the United States of America to do whatever we can to try and reduce that instability and make sure that we have friends, allies and also governments that legitimately represent the aspirations of their people. That is one of the greatest problems we've had. We have supported governments in the past in the Middle East who didn't have the support of their people. We need not just the support of governments, we need the support of the people in that region. This is a critical opportunity to gain that support. I believe that's clearly in the national security interest of the American people.

So, I do not agree with the gentleman from Ohio's resolution in saying that the President has not articulated a case. He has. We in the House should vote whether we approve it or not, but I don't think it is correct to say that the case has not been made. Let's have a vote in this body, as we will, on the Kucinich resolution, of whether or not to support what is going on there or not, but we should not simply be asking the President for something he has already provided.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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