“Seventeen years after 9/11 the USA looks like its aligned with Al-Qaeda jihadists in Syria. “
If you look around at history, there is a long list of weird allies. Before WWII the British considered attacking Soviet Russia. It was only after Germany invaded that Stalin turned from a vicious commie dictator to “Uncle Joe.” For what it’s worth, I think Trump leaks stuff to sound like an unhinged, ready to attack anybody crazy. He has shown, though, that he’s crazy like a fox. It’s better that the world’s bad actors are kept off guard than to assure them, as Obama did, over and over, that the US will tolerate anything and do nothing. If you’ve played poker, you understand what Trump’s doing.
I was just a kid in WWII and lived in NYC. We had one old gal who lived in the apartment across from us who was a devout Communist and parroted the Party Line, condemning fascism. When the Nazis signed a peace treaty with Russia, she swung like a compass needle in the other direction. She swung another 180 in 1941. That's when I got an early education on how they did things.
Pretty soon after that, we heard nothing but good things about "Good Ole Uncle Joe".