White House faces political storm six days into air strike attacks on Libya

President Obama returned to Washington and a political storm on Wednesday over the military campaign in Libya.

Five days into a mission that started while Obama was out of
the country on a trip to Latin America, the criticism of the White House’s
handling of the Libyan crisis reached a new peak as military leaders hedged on
when the U.S. would transition leadership to its allies.

{mosads}Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) delivered the broadside Wednesday,
questioning whether the White House had settled on any benchmarks for success
with its campaign, which the Speaker said had not been clearly defined to the
country, the Congress or U.S. troops.

“I and many other members of the House of Representatives
are troubled that U.S. military resources were committed to war without clearly
defining for the American people, the Congress and our troops what the mission
in Libya is and what America’s role is in achieving that mission,” Boehner
wrote.

“In fact, the limited, sometimes contradictory, case made to
the American people by members of your administration has left some fundamental
questions about our engagement unanswered.”

Boehner’s tough words are expected to foreshadow a week of
hearings and scrutiny of the administration’s plans for Libya when Congress
resumes next week.

Obama’s return to Washington several days before Congress
ends its recess gives the White House an opportunity to retake control of the
story of the Libyan campaign.

Obama at times during his presidency has lost ground in
political debates while traveling outside the country, but has come back
quickly upon returning to the capital. Obama’s schedule includes no public
events on Thursday or Friday, but White House officials suggested he could make
his case again to the public.

“Without specifically speaking to one speaking appearance,
it’s certainly going to be the case that the president will continue to address
the situation in Libya in the coming days,” Deputy National Security Adviser
Ben Rhodes said during a Wednesday briefing on Air Force One as the president
flew home.

On his first full day back in Washington, Obama is
scheduled to meet with Vice President Biden for lunch before meeting with
his national security team in the afternoon to discuss the Libya situation.

The tough criticism from Boehner and other members of
Congress left administration officials insisting that they took consultations
with Congress seriously, and noting that only a week ago the White House had
been criticized for moving too slowly on Libya.

“It’s important to remember that in the run-up to this
action, we were criticized somewhat — in fact, fairly frequently — by those who
felt like we weren’t moving quickly enough, and now some are criticizing us for
not going, for going too quickly,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said
during the Wednesday briefing.

The administration hopes to have handed off leadership of
the coordinated campaign to its allies before Congress ends its recess next
week, but there were signs Wednesday that this could take longer than
anticipated.

In the first four days after the onset of the bombing and
no-fly zone operation, senior uniformed and civilian Pentagon officials said
the U.S. would hand command to an organization led by other nations within a
few days.

But by Wednesday, two senior U.S. military officials had
dropped the time element when discussing the handover.

“We are in the process of working through a new
command-and-control structure” with allied nations, Chief of Naval Operations
Adm. Gary Roughead said during a breakfast meeting with reporters in
Washington.

The current commander of coalition forces, U.S. Africa
Command Army Gen. Carter Ham, said Tuesday that he “would not put a date certain” on
the transition.

“It’s not so simple as just having a handshake someplace and
say, ‘OK, you’re now in charge,’ ” Ham said. “I do not see this being a
prolonged situation, but we need that identification of the headquarters, and
then we’ll begin that process and move on.”

With the transition taking longer than expected, some
experts said the administration has created a political problem by emphasizing
that the mission would be multinational and not simply led by the U.S.

“I’m a little
perplexed at why the administration would place such an emphasis on the
transition when it, frankly, didn’t have to,” said Damon Wilson, who worked for
former President George W. Bush’s White House and is now with the Atlantic
Council.

“I think the administration went down this path purely for
political reasons — for the perception that this has a more international
face,” Wilson said. “They wanted to show this was done differently than it
would have been done by the George W. Bush administration.”

Larry Berman, an expert on the presidency and a political science
professor at the University of California-Davis, said the larger worry for the
administration should be that European allies will drop off from the mission.

“Right now it’s a NATO-US effort, but the sooner the
president articulates an endgame scenario that goes beyond ‘no ground troops,’
the safer it will be for him politically,” Berman said.