Ya, I think the idea that this money could have been better spent is troublesome. Lets say by diverting all of the counter-terrorism funds into cancer research we could cure it. But by doing so we would have on average 7,000 (I think this is somewhere around 2x 9/11) deaths due to terrorism a year. It seems pretty clear that this society, while it lives longer lives overall, would be much more frail and fear ridden. As people lost confidence in the government they would lose confidence in the dollar (the only thing propping it up..) and you can see where this is going...