NOTES 69 the stage of development of any given society. All important economic, political and social issues and decisions pertaining to it are reinforced with the leading ideology. In matters of foreign policy it is used as a powerful tool to extend and justify such policy, howsoever heinous it may be. We shall presently have recourse to expose an American author who seeks to justify the American barbarities in Vietnam in the name of common humanity. The attempt of ideological justification of American foreign policy has been greatest in the case of Vietnam. Scholars, university professors and eminent men of public standing have vied with each other to formulate theories that would lend credence to the American misdeeds in Vietnam. The net result of these exercises has been that a true understanding of the nature of the American intervention in Indo-Ghina has been buried deep, to say the least, under a mountain of confusion which are outright lies as the subsequent press reports prove. On the face of it, such a statement would appear to be contradictory. How can a nation's policies be furthered if the propaganda which is used in its defence is misleading ? The answer is that American ideological propaganda has its own logic and, in fact, within its own framework, does serve American foreign policy very well. For one thing, it has been successful for many years in portraying the most barbarous war that it has been waging in Vietnam in such obscurantist terms as the 'defence of human freedom'. Of course, the questions, whose freedom and at what cost ?—at least to the discerning mind—have been left unanswered by the American ideologists for the simple reason that these questions on the basis of their propagandistic assumptions are unanswerable. This is amply borne out by the fact that millions in America itself— workers, youth, intellectuals and even GFs—have revolted against what they see as the increasing disparity between the professions of their government and the actual manner in which events in Vietnam have shaped. The fostering of the humanistic illussions of American foreign policy has been one important method of ideological propaganda. Attempts have continuously been made along these lines to win over the Indian people to the American view regarding the holocaust in Vietnam. These attempts are often couched in pedantic language and have a scholarly ring about them, which sometimes makes the task of discerning their utter hollowness more difficult. The most recent and sophisticated example of such an attempt is the article by Douglas Pike1 entitled "Vietnam : The American Point of View."2 The general thesis that Pike puts forward is that "the essential reason why America is in Vietnam, has been in Vietnam and, for that matter, now largely is disengaging from Vietnam (sic !), is that it seeks to serve its national interest.9' He goes on to state : "Having said this, however, one has not said very much. For, indeed, everything every nation does is in pursuit of its national interest, or at least