LAST NIGHT SOMETIME, halfway around the world, American civilians were getting out of bed in Thailand and in South Vietnam. Some of them, mostly retired Air Force officers or Air Force Reservists, have orders not to discuss their work. They work for five different private airlines operating in Southeast Asia, and they work for fairly low wages. For the last month, these men have been getting up every morning and boarding DC-8 cargo transport lets bound for Phnom Penh. The planes flying south from Thailand carry nearly 600 tons of ammunition a day to loyalist forces in Cambodian capital. Or so it seems. Early this week the UPI reported that on Feb. 27 Lon Nol ordered distribution of all rise rations to be restricted to government soldiers.

That news, if true, can only mean more terror for the two million residents of Phnom Penh. Since 1971--when Nixon decided to send American troops on an "incursion" into Cambodia to break NLF supply lines to South Vietnam--Cambodia has been sliding deeper into war. The struggle there between the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries and the troops of the Lon Nol regime has reached a crisis. The Khmer Rouge have the capital city surrounded, with all land and water approaches cut off and they are shelling the city now from an four sides. According to reports in the western media, they now control close to 90 per cent of the territory in the country. Hundreds of thousands of peasants are now refugees in Phnom Penh, having fed the fighting in the countryside, especially since the most recent Khmer Rouge offensive began. But except for the few very rich, life in the capital would appall any observers more sensitive to pain and deprivation than Americans are now after decades of constant, televised warfare in Asia.

And, as in most civil wars, the war in Cambodia has been particularly brutal for civilians. Businesses in Phnom Penh have shut down for want of customers and for fear of rocket attacks in parts of the city. The city's hospitals are over-crowded with civilians suffering from shelling, disease, and starvation. As of this week, there are not even any ambulances available to transport wounded and dying civilians to the hospitals. Children scour the city's streets and dumps looking for enough food to stay alive; merchants are selling off what remains of their inventories. A fear has taken hold in Phnom Penh which would have turned to panic long ago were it not for the American airlift.

In Cambodia, as in South Vietnam, the regime is now completely dependent on American aid. Its resources have run out--either ferretted away down the well-greased tubes of official corruption, or expropriated by the Khmer--and Lon Nol has become a pathetic junkie for American dollars. The Cambodian army is disorganized, inefficient and apathetic it has almost no popular support. Almost immediately after the coup that brought Lon Nol to power in 1970, the Khmer Rouge began to expand rapidly, and since then they have been slowly winning support in the countryside and steadily regaining the ground Lon Nol took from deposed Prince Noredom Sihanouk. The Khmer are now armed with a well-trained fighting force estimated at 75,000.

LITTLE ELSE, however, is known about them. Few western journalists have been able to study the Khmer since their formation, and even the State Department is in the dark.

A general confusion exists about the Khmer leadership. Before the 1970 coup, Sihanouk actively expressed the Communists Party of Cambodia. Since his exile in Peking began, though, he has become sympathetic to the Khmer and they, in turn, have given him at least tacit support. In a series of pronouncements from Peking during the last few years, Sihanouk has indicated, in phrases reminiscent of Nixon, that he would like to return to Cambodia after Lon Nol's ouster as a kind of self-styled elder statesman. The Khmer have given little indication of what role they expect Sihanouk to play, but it seems that their current support is part of a long-term strategy of building a popular front including patriots loyal to Sihanouk.

What is clear, though, is that the Khmer are fairly independent. They have a long-standing feud with the Vietnamese and they are apparently angry with the Soviets for maintaining an embassy in Phnom Pehn after the coup and they include as members both nationalists and communists. One other thing is certain: they would crush Lon Nol in a matter of weeks if the airlift is stopped.

The supplies the airlift brings into Phnom Pehn everyday are the only legs Lon Nol has to stand on. Without the ammunition, the army would have to surrender. Without the rice, the refugees would starve, as some are doing now, Lon Nol would be forced to fice to avoid execution, and we would have gained nothing. Even with the aid, as Defense Secretary Schlesinger admitted, we can only hope to preserve the status quo. The administration indicates it is hoping to get just enough money to last until the rainy season starts in June, hoping the Khmer will then agree to a compromise peace before the rains stop. The policy is doomed. The Khmer have no reason to negotiate. They have all the strategy advantages, and nothing but contempt for Lon Nol.

So, the United States is again the sole supporter of a corrupt, unpopular dictator in Asia, and again trying unsuccessful to influence the outcome of a civil war to suit its own interests. But even more striking parallels to Vietnam exist within the past two weeks, the President of the United States, his Secretary of State, and his Secretary of Defense have told the American people that we must not "lose" Cambodia; that if we do, the rest of Southeast Asia will "fall"; and that our allies will all panic if we cut off the aid. In yet another throwback to the 1960s, a group of six U.S. Representatives recently flew to Vietnam and Cambodia to check on our progress.

AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS in which the "American people voted only for "peace" candidates, the policy is still the same. And after fifteen years in which the American government spent $150 billion and in which 50,000 American men died in combat, the policy still does not fit the facts. Built into this policy, of course, is the assumption that Cambodia is "ours" to "lose." Moreover, the president said last week. "The policy of this country is to help those nations with military hardware--not U.S. military personnel--where the government and the people of a country want to protect their country from foreign aggression." Two more fallacies: the war in Cambodia is a civil war, and the people of Cambodia have been mistaken for the person of Lon Nol. In fact, we (that is our government) are continuing to impose ourselves on a people who don't want us there. We are involved in a war where we have no business, and we are not even supporting the right side.

But Americans foreign policy has always been conducted with at least one eye on domestic politics. Since the Chinese Revolution, American presidents have assumed that their "mandate" includes an obligation to shore up capitalism everywhere we can. Each has assumed that he must be as tough as "the enemy." But buried in the cover story on Cambodia in the latest Newsweek is a revealing reference to "the White House's puzzling failure to marshall witnesses for Congressional testimony or to lobby key congressman for their support." If the president can't be that tough, he must at least appear that way. Ford apparently does not care for Lon Nol or for the Cambodian people as much as he has been claiming lately. Instead, he seems to be using an old presidential ploy: force Congress into an untenable position, and then tell the voters you told them so. Tell them you did all you could, but that Congress just wouldn't go along.

So, as Congress decides whether or not so maintain the vise on Phnom Pehn by appropriating a supplemental fund for the airlift, we may see the most ironic turn of events in this war: Ford may get a continued airlift he doesn't really want.