We haven't really stopped any such attacks; we've brought attention to attempts which were never going to succeed, but that's it.
Oh, sure. All the attacks which get stopped are "ones which were never going to succeed", and all the ones which succeed are ones which "clearly show the incompetence and futility of the security apparatus", amirite? Nice rhetoric bro; wee bit lacking on the intellectual integrity front.
If an open theater of war comes in earnest, we will have Americans who can remember government prattling and a single attack, versus Arabs who can remember friends and family dying in bombings of coffee shops by Americans across decades.
This is just uneducated white-guilt garbage. Yes, it's Americans who are walking into Arab coffee shops and detonating themselves. Sure it is. It's the small fraction of Arabs killed by Americans which other Arabs will remember; not the much larger fraction killed by the factions within their own borders. Ignore the Iraqis and Kurds all crying for help within a couple years of the US leaving; it's not because they need saving from the same people we've been fighting all along, but rather because those poor bastards must have been so terrorized by the Eevil Amerikkan Pigdogs that they've developed Stockholm Syndrome. They hate the US so much they can't wait to see you again.
To combat this, we basically bomb other countries, call anyone over 18 a soldier ("militant"), and prove to the world that we're the axis of evil that must be removed.
And this is just ignorant anti-American bullshit posing as open-minded progressive thought. Yes, just go ahead and label an entire nation an "axis of evil", based on the demonstrably false claim that they're targeting "anyone over 18". Go ahead and mix lies and hypocrisy, in an attempt to justify bigotry.
I know that you don't actually believe what you're saying; I'm just not sure if that makes it more evil or less. I do, however, know that you are scum, and that I have far more in common with the average Iraqi than I do with a fanatic like you.