CNN's international correspondent Jim Clancy called the West Point response to President Obama's meandering foreign policy address "pretty icy" Wednesday.
Clancy said it was "not really a great speech to give at the U.S. Military Academy," and the address has drawn bipartisan criticism.
"It was a philosophical speech," he said. "It was not a Commander-in-Chief speaking to his troops. And you heard the reception. I mean, it was pretty icy."
Obama said he believed strongly in American exceptionalism, but he continually used straw men in his address by implying that critics of his vision of foreign policy always advocated first and foremost for military action.
A panel on MSNBC's Morning Joe criticized the president for his announcement to fully withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by 2016, and even liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson ripped Obama for giving a convoluted speech Wednesday.
"There are individual problems that require individual solutions," Robinson said. "And so that then sort of militates against some sort of sweeping Obama Doctrine that you can sum up in a bumper sticker. And I don’t think we got one today, frankly. He’s against isolationism, but he is interventionist, but not unilateralist. Just because we have the biggest hammer doesn’t mean every problem is a nail, just because we have the best military doesn’t mean every problem requires intervention."