Why Americans Can't Remember Afghanistan: The US has been trying to shape the country since the 1950s. --- Since the 1950s, the US has been trying to mold that remote land to its own desires, first through an aid "war" in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union; then, starting as the 1970s ended, an increasingly bitter and brutally hot proxy war with the Soviets meant to pay them back for supporting America's enemies during the war in Vietnam. One bad war leads to another. --- From then until the early 1990s, Washington put weapons in the hands of Islamic fundamentalist extremists of all sorts—thought to be natural, devoutly religious allies in the war against "godless communism"—gloated over the Red Army's defeat and the surprising implosion of the Soviet empire, and then experienced its own catastrophic blowback from Afghanistan on September 11, 2001. After 50 years of scheming behind the scenes, the US put boots on the ground in 2001 and now, 12 years later, is still fighting there—against some Afghans on behalf of other Afghans while training Afghan troops to take over and fight their countrymen, and others, on their own. - More to read in Motherjones.com / tomdispatch