Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) High levels of security theater mean long entrance lines in front of (perceived) high value targets. Therefore instead of attacking the high value target the security theater is protecting, the line of people waiting to enter gets attacked. I get nervous waiting in lines knowing any terrorist who isn't an idiot has their sights on me. This isn't going to happen because a bunch of people in line at an airport isn't…
At risk of never flying unmolested again--you do realize that you've identified the lacking qualities in the aforementioned attack plan, and that those can be readily addressed by such simple actions as hitting more places at once over a longer period of time? The entire point of the article is that that sort of a analysis is ongoing, is that when you try to deal with an opponent you are dealing with something active…
Yes, but not a very large-scale one. You might like to consider that stuff like the NSA is also part of the security theater; the ambiguity over just what it is listening to, combined with the perception that it has a universal reach, primarily benefits the US in that it keeps antagonists awake at night worrying about the security of their own networks.
I think people need to realize that the number of Bad People in the world is really small, and that they shouldn't give up freedoms in hopes of somehow decreasing their exposure.
True, but it's also unrealistic to be indifferent to an obvious danger. I neither want nor intend to use the fire extinguisher in the corner of my kitchen, but I don't consider its purchase to be a waste of money.
Large state and private groups are much more harmful, especially because they turn Not Bad People into Annoyingly Inconvenient And Impersonally Malicious People.
I don't really agree with this - it's a retread of Rousseau's 'noble savage' theory. Of course, some people get radicalized is response to western actions, but some people are bigoted assholes to start with. Recall that one of Bin Laden's primary beefs was that the US had a military base on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia (by Islamic standards), and this was just intolerable. Disapproving of US military installations on your non-US soil is entirely reasonable, blowing people up over it is not. Although the US had hand tangles with AQ before 9-11 (eg the USS Cole bombing, among others), the western response had been quite restrained, indeed proportionate. I don't think it's the inherent fault of the west that AQ is built upon an a reactionary and quite absolutist religious viewpoint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutbism).
Now, I do think that when you consider Islam is ~1400 years old and look at where Christianity was at a similar stage in its history, it might well be that schisms, reformation, and sectarian violence are just stages that you would expect Islamic society to go through; but that doesn't impose any obligation on us to accept the role of punching bag.
I don't share your belief that scale is the problem, and if we just keep everything local and avoid the formation of large states or corporations we'd have peace.