Oren Dorell

USA TODAY

Almost three years after the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, oil-rich Libya is in utter chaos, as militias fight for control of the country and its elected government has fled along with tens of thousands of citizens.

The turmoil in Libya is a cautionary tale as the United States enlists the help of moderate Syrian rebels to defeat the radical Islamic State and oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

As occurred in Libya, U.S. intervention to remove an anti-U.S. regime could lead to another failed state and more instability in the Middle East.

President Obama's plan involves partnering with pro-Western elements of the Syrian opposition. They would provide ground troops, bolstered by U.S. training and air power, to defeat the Islamic State. The opposition's main goal, however, is to defeat Assad, who Obama has said must go.

The strategy is similar to the one used in Libya in 2011, when a U.S.-led bombing campaign with NATO and Qatar saved anti-government militias from being overrun in the city of Benghazi and helped them overthrow an erratic dictator who ruled for 42 years. That effort also relied on partnering with supposed moderates so U.S. ground forces would not be needed.

In the end, radical elements wound up being empowered, as security in Libya deteriorated dramatically.

A year after Gadhafi's overthrow, an al-Qaeda terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi killed four U.S. citizens, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Last month Islamist militias whose political leaders lost this summer's elections to a secular coalition ejected government forces from the country's capital, Tripoli. The radical militias have since announced their own government, while warring with one another for control.

Meanwhile, the elected parliament is convening in a converted car ferry in the port city of Tobruk near the Egyptian border, and Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have sent fighter jets to bomb the militants. More than 250,000 people have fled the fighting, according to the United Nations.

The Benghazi attack left "an ugly scar," and taught Obama "to be even more incremental" in future conflicts, says James Carafano, vice president for foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation. Since then, "he's doubled down on the formula of doing just enough to not get criticized for doing nothing."

Marina Ottaway, a Middle East analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars, says the Libya lesson is "not so much that the United States should be more engaged, but that it's much easier to tear down a regime than to build up a new one."

A State Department official sought to put U.S. Libya policy in the best light before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs this past week but acknowledged the administration worries that Libyan radicals with ties to al-Qaeda could spread to neighboring countries and across the Middle East.

"We have concerns about the potential of Libyan militias Ansar al Shariah and others to continue to metastasize and spread to Algeria, Egypt … and spread to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other nations and become a serious security issue to the rest of the world," said Gerald Feierstein, deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs.

Libya, which has a population of only 6 million and oil reserves that rank ninth in the world, "offers enormous opportunities," Feierstein said.

The United States is helping train about 5,000 border guards to help stem the flow of fighters and weapons into the country, and is working with civil society, functioning institutions and the recently elected government of Libya to develop an inclusive coalition that represents all of Libyan society, he said.

But the central government is weak. And Sudan, which shares a border with Libya, and Qatar are sending weapons and money to Islamist militias against U.S. wishes, he said.

Democratic and Republican committee members said U.S. efforts to mediate between warring parties that have rejected the election results seem divorced from reality.

"What civil society, what functioning institutions?" said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called training a few thousand border guards to counter many more thousands of well-armed militiamen "absurd."

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., countered that a hands-off strategy in Libya and elsewhere is better than the alternative: sending American personnel into harm's way. "If we wanted real control on the ground it would require hundreds of casualties a year," he said.