Indeed, people here get angry when it's pointed out, but Obama wasn't completely off-base when he called ISIS the "JV squad" or whatever it was. Obama's real faux pas was the ENORMOUS power vacuum his foreign policy left in Iraq, a power vacuum so bad that ISIS with AK's, RPG's riding in pickup trucks saw the Iraqi army armed with export-grade M1 tanks, Bradleys, HMMV's, FREAKING AIR POWER ASSETS, and all sorts of American weaponry and training, at best sit on their hands, and at worst... flee.
Wich in of itself is another prime example of "Why Arab militaries fail" because they lack the esprit de corps, and mutual trust and teamwork Westernized nations have. And it's a problem that ISIS, operating as something less than a state-level actor has just as badly, if not even worse. And ISIS didn't actually "spread" across the ME and N. Africa either. To a large degree, these were all existing militant Islamist factions, who all declared themselves as "ISIS" because they were the cool kids with the branding, the gruesome executions, and some slick media and propaganda videos and a magazine...
As to their competence, I admit, ISIS has got brutality in spades, I'll give them that. However, as an actual military and force projection... These are people who manage blow themselves up as often as they do their enemies. Groups like the Kurds/Peshmerga have done a damn good job holding their own, despite the fact that they operate on a shoestring financially and logistically, simply because they have a bit more unity and trust within their larger group and culture.
ME Radical Islam is simply is not a region, a culture, or any one nation that has the wherewithal, in terms of money, resources, or simple ability to threaten us the way the Warsaw Pact did, or before them, the Axis powers in WWII did. And even then, when faced with those powers in WWII (Granted, with the help of the absolute bloody meatgrinder that was the Soviet Union and Eastern Front) we kicked the *expletive deleted*it out of these "peer militaries". And then in the long drawn-out Playoff match more or less did the same to the Warsaw Pact economically in the Cold War until they collapsed.
Also, while I'm no fan of unfettered Islamic/Middle Eastern immigration into the U.S. there's a big reason there's so much more onesy-twosey gun, truck ramming, and small bombing attacks in Europe.
ME immigrants or refugees, and even 2nd and 3rd generation-born in Europe pretty much occupy the bottom rung socially and demographically. In America... uh... (cough cough) that rung is already filled, and to a degree, they don't start out automatically on the "bottom" here. And added to that, there STILL ARE large remnants of European social stratification and America is still much more of a meritocracy than Europe is.
That's not to say there isn't the same potential for someone from the ME to be disgruntled or radicalized, but in America they're simply more likely to be able to build some sort of life good enough that it makes them resistant to actually pulling the trigger so to speak and throwing it all away. It would seem a lot of them like to conspire or stay in the networks, but never seem to get around to actually pulling off an attack.
Announcing the death of Western Civ is a lot like hand-wringing over today's "crazy times", when they don't really hold a candle to the 1960's in terms of tension and unrest. Which is somewhat funny, since the 60's and malaise of the 70's is something in living memory for many of us.
In the same way, by real measures of human prosperity and well-being, and global metrics for war, disease, (extreme) poverty, we are reaching heights unimaginable to people of the centuries that have preceded us. And Western Civ was much more "on the ropes" many times during the fall of the Western Roman empire, the Dark Ages, and during the Bubonic Plague.
It's kind of perverse to view an era of conflict that's largely defined by terrorism and asymmetric warfare, and a few medium to small-sized "rogue nations" as a "good thing", but in a very real sense it is. Because it means there's a dearth of any real immediate threats from peer-level competitors that actually would pose an existential threat to America or Western Civ as a whole.