WE DON'T call it a colony, but of course that's what it is, that little country which has just made one of its periodic re-entries into the American consciousness, Laos is an American colony-or an attempt at one. Everyone in Laos knows it, and all but the Americans discuss it openly, some with hate, some with envy, some with fear, some with an affection born of greed.

The French know it. They know colonialism when they see it; being its past masters Many of the original French colonials were understandably a little upset back in '54 when the French forces in Indochina had to cut their losses and leave for good, but those who stayed on anyway-often because they couldn't afford the passage home-have had the last laugh.

Dressing up the white man's burden in anti-communism, the Americans have kept Laos-and Vietnam-a comfortable and profitable home for a white man.

The French have one major worry-not that the Americans will ever leave, but that they will spend so much money that inflation will make it impossible for these lower-middle echelon functionaries to continue to live like kings. And, after all, isn't that what colonialism is all about-turning an accident of nationality in to permanent effortless profit?

Still, while it lasts the French have a few good laughs on the Americans as they sit around the tennis club in Vientiane, which is to Saigon's Cercle Sportif as the IAB must be to New York's Racquet Club. The club is integrated; after a few gins-and-tonics the Laotians and the French get to laughing together, and to toasting "permanent friendship between our two nations."

The French, whose outdoorsy days are over, have their laughs over bourbon in the Hotel Continental, for years one of Vientiane's only two hotels. No American girl who values her reputation enters the Continental bar/lobby; here the French drinking companions are American pilots-employed by Air America, paid by the CIA, earning $1000 a week for airlifting "rice" to tribal villagers, drowning out the echoes of antiaircraft fire with dope and liquor. "Laotian neutrality" and American "food aid" are pretty good jokes when you're ripped.

[Do you know that when I went to Laos at age sixteen, I didn't smoke any dope, didn't bring any back, either? Do you know that it was selling in the marketplace for 200 kip-40c-an ounce? Do you know how I cried when I read all about it later in the Times, the moralistic stories about the international hippies who were crashing in Vientiane and tripping constantly? Of course, it all would have turned out rather differently if I'd been smoking over there-the ultimate horror wouldn't have sunk in.]

Why is everybody laughing? Laugh and the world laughs with you. (The joke is on the people who are crying, the refugees, the bombed-out villagers, the farmers whose land now resembles the surface of the moon . . . . ) Our good radical mental picture of the long-suffering Asian leaves out the Laotian who is getting a good laugh and a fat pocketbook out of the American colonial ego trip.

"Speculation rises in (Vientiane, Saigon, Tokyo, Paris, London, Washington, Cambridge) that South Vietnamese forces have invaded Laos with American support at the express invitation of the pre-eminent clique of right-wing Laotian generals, against the wishes of neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma."

It is the summer of 1966. I am sixteen. I am living in the house-i.e., stockade-of the Chief of Staff of the Royal Laotian Army and Air Force. I am eating breakfast with mon general, who is rarely at home in Vientiane. "He is with the army, cherie." In my sweetest voice [You can talk to me, I'm just a dumb girl . . . .], in my best high school French, I ask, "Please, mon general, tell me, how goes la guerre?"

Mon general, a very fat and jolly man, grins at me toothlessly. "Mais, cherie, quelle guerre?" I learn later that the general does indeed spend a lot of time with the army, his army-guarding his holdings in Northern Thailand, supervising opium and gold smuggling by the Air Force and the army.

I learn that these holdings in Thailand are for the day when the war ends and "mon general" must flee the country-the day when, as the peasants put it, Prince Souphanouvong, commander of the Pathet Lao, beats out his older but less educated half-brother, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, in this family quarrel.

This is not to say that all Laotian generals are so corrupt and hypocritical. Some of them are quite fired up about "following orders" and contributing to the genocide of their countrymen. One has been faithfully utilizing CIA funds and personnel for eight years, training tribesmen to fight other tribesmen trained by the North Vietnamese.

Of course, he hasn't produced many results. Up until recently, the same Laotian provinces had for years been changing from royal to Communist control and back again with boring regularity.

Perhaps he has trouble inspiring his soldiers Ironically, these tribesmen-the Meo-occupy a place in the hearts of their Laotion countrymen similar to the place in the hearts of white Americans occupied by the black and brown men who do so much of their country's fighting.