68 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Address, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Brave words indeed! But where did they lead the Kennedy administration to? Straight into the calloues Vietnam war, where the United States was routed. As Moynihan himself says, ^The same administration that had launched the Peace Corps had sent advisors to Vietnam. Kennedy said we would go to Vietnam in the same speech in which he announced we would go to the moon." Again, the same emphasis on Freedom and Human Rights which Moynihan proposed was adopted by another President, Jimmy Carter, as the official theme of US foreign policy. That even this has proved to be hollow is proved by the fact that the international US nosedive still continues as strongly as ever. Witness Iran, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, etc. The bitter truth which the US never officially admits, is that despite all the high-flown rhetoric of human rights, the US military and economic support to a wide range of corrupt, semi-fascist dictatorships, repressive military juntas and downright racist regimes still continues merrily. This has indeed been one of the hallmarks of US foreign policy ever since the Second World War. The worst atrocities suddenly become sacrosanct in the name of anti-Communism. And as Moynihan quotes in the book, the State Department itself has "refused to give the US Congress a list of those countries receiving US military aid that have engaged in gross violation of human rights." Moynihan shrewdly calculated that his tough-line tactics would strike a sympathetic chord among many Americans who were also suffering from impotent frustration at the universal American decline. That his antics finally proved not just ineffective but downright counter- productive to US foreign policy, did not seem to matter much. For Maynihan achieved his objective—he impressed enough people to be elected to the U S Senate in November 1976. Several Americans themselves accuse him of using the U N platform as a launching-pad for his political career. It is now amply clear that his unsuccessful but spirited defence of Israel against the General Assembly resolution that "Zionism is a form of Racism and Racial Discrimination", to which he devotes a large part of the book, was only partly a matter of principle. The other major consideration was surely to win over the politically crucial Jewish support and votes in New York State.