Extract taken from the article Report from Vietnam II: The Problems of

Success by Mary McCarthy found in the Javous Arcades Project

blogspot http://javous308.blogspot.com.es/2011/05/report-from-vietnam-iiproblems-of.html where you can read the complete article
The Saigonese themselves are unaware of the magnitude of what is
happening to their country, since they are unable to use military transport to
get an aerial view of it; they only note the refugees sleeping in the streets and
hear the B-52s pounding a few miles away. Seeing the war from the air, amid
the crisscrossing Skyraiders, Supersabres, Phantoms, observation planes, Psywar planes (dropping leaflets), you ask your self how much longer the Viet
Cong can hold out; the country is so small that at the present rate of destruction
there will be no place left for them to hide, not even under water, breathing
through a straw. The plane and helicopter crews are alert for the slightest sign
of movement in the fields and woods and estuaries below; they lean forward
intently, scanning the ground. At night, the Dragon-ships come out, dropping
flares and firing mini-guns.
The Air Force seems inescapable, like the Eye of God, and soon, you imagine
(let us hope with hyperbole), all will be razed, charred, defoliated by that
terrible searching gaze. Punishment can be magistral. A correspondent, who
was tickled by the incident, described flying with the pilot of a little FAC plane
that directs a big bombing mission; below a lone Vietnamese on a bicycle
stopped, looked up, dismounted, took up a rifle, and fired; the pilot let him
have it with the whole bomb-load of napalmenough for a platoon. In such
circumstances, anyone with a normal sense of fair play cannot help pulling for
the bicyclist, but the sense of fair play, supposed to be Anglo-Saxon, has
atrophied in the Americans here from lack of exercise. We draw a long face over
Viet Cong terror, but, no one stops to remember that the Viet Cong does not
possess that superior instrument of terroran air force, which in our case, over
South Vietnam at least, is acting almost with impunity. The worst thing that
could happen to our country would be to win this war.
...