In his study of U.S. Vietnam policy, The Limits of Intervention, Townsend Hoopes ruefully admitted that “nothing is more difficult to confront than the need to outgrow conceptions that have had undeniable validity—have been in truth basic reference points for thought and action involving the life of the nation. It is a difficulty that persists even when one is intellectually aware that familiar conceptions no longer fully square with the facts.” Hoopes intended his strictures to apply to the cold war tenets which for so long provided the guidelines for U.S. foreign policy. They apply with equal force, however, not only to either official policies and orientations but to the conceptions of their critics.