Afghanistan Studies is an important sector of the American Academy where one encounters a thriving and growing set of institutions, practices, and specialists that are very well representative of Orientalism as articulated by Edward Said. This talk outlines the history of a Saidian Orientalism of Afghanistan in the American Academy between 1947 and 2011. Within the American Academy Anthropology has been the most important disciplinary location for Afghanistan Studies. Since World War Two Orientalist approaches to Afghanistan have become very well entrenched in Anthropology, and through it other academic departments in the United States. During the Cold War anthropological expertise on Afghanistan premised on Orientalism was appropriated by and harnessed to United States Foreign Policy concerns, such as for an important example regarding the Pashtunistan disputes between Afghanistan and Pakistan from the 1940s through the 1960s. The close relationship between the American Anthropologists of Afghanistan and US military and intelligence activities that were developing in the 1970s became much more intimate during the 1980s when academic voices validated the disastrous policy of lavishing an array of resources including weapons, Islamist ideology, and close access to American policymakers upon Afghan and militants of many other nationalities who were recruited into a global network of mujahideen. Since 11 September 2001 a small but influential network of Orientalist Anthropologists has been highly visible among the legions of experts and specialists who have contributed to the surge in academic production and policy/security discourse about Afghanistan in and beyond the United States. There are large financial incentives and explicit political motivations for marketing Orientalist constructs in the US academy, in the public sector, and within US intelligence and military communities. The large numbers of Anthropologists and other social scientists participating in the US Military’s Human Terrain Teams best evince the perpetuation and influence of Orientalist constructions of Afghanistan in the American Academy and US Government. The content of this paper is grounded in the oeuvre of the American Anthropologists of Afghanistan, including but not limited to the publications of Thomas Barfield, David Edwards, and Louis Dupree, and the essay is conceptually organized around the writings of Edward Said, David Price, Roberto Gonzalez, and the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.