Unfortunately, the US military has transferred the Cold War strategy of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" to radical pseudo-Islamic militant groups. That's not going to work so well because you might have two groups that have exactly the same beliefs except they gave allegiance to a different imam so they consider each other to be kuffar.

Yea. I think every employee of a 3 letter agency should be required to write a scholarly paper on the term "blowback" and have it peer reviewed before they get to spend any money.