Why are they so confused?

A columnist from the US writes that " Trump's bluster helps radical Islam ". As part of the surge against the Al Qaeda by George W Bush the US military formed an alliance with the sheikhs in Anbar province in Iraq who were strong believers in Islam. This was possible because Bush " did not describe juhadists in explicitly Islamic terms ". If he had then it is probable that the sheikhs would not have cooperated with the Americans. Is that right? This is the same US army which had used white phosphorus on the civilian population in Fallujah, which is in Anbar province, in 2004, under the leadership of Bush. Surely, it is more probable that the US paid the sheikhs in dollar bills like they did with Saddam's generals, to betray him. Saddam's officers are now helping devise war strategy for ISIS while many of the same Sunni sheikhs have pledged allegiance to ISIS. Apart from money, it is also possible that the sheikhs saw the US as a lesser evil than the Shia majority in the south and hoped that the US would protect them from Shia rule. They must have felt terribly betrayed by the quick pull of US troops under Obama. In response to Donald Trump's use of the words "radical Islam" Obama said," We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." The view, that Trump's words are more dangerous than thousands of innocent civilians killed by indiscriminate drone strikes ordered by Obama, means that all terrorists are fools. A recent strike on an Al Shabaab training base in Somalia apparently killed 150 'suspected' terrorists. Is it possible that the camp had no cooks, drivers, wives or children? The strike was described as "defensive" by the US. How can it be defensive when they blow up a bunch of civilians in another country thousands of miles away from the US? " At the end of his second term, Obama is trying to recreate in Syria the success of Bush's alliance with the Anbari sheikhs," writes the article. Is he? He seriously underestimated the threat of ISIS, calling them "junior varsity" in 2012. It is hard to know what he has been trying in Syria. The US has been actively supporting some groups fighting Bashar al Assad while Turkey, which is a member of NATO, has been making money by helping ISIS smuggle looted Syrian oil. It is only after Russia started targeting ISIS that the US took it seriously. Russian bombing of oil trucks infuriated Turkey which shot down a Russian jet returning from a bombing mission. Russia refuses to make any difference betwen 'good terrorists' and 'bad terrorists', like the US, which leads to confrontation. Finally, the article says," Senior war planners understand that the prospect of a Kurdish force liberating Raqqa risks alienating the local population..." Not true. It is Turkey which sees Kurds as enemies and is bombing Kurds in Syria. Seems that the correspondent has no clue about the Middle East. Neither does Obama. Nor Trump.