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I can't help to think that if the US people, media and government hadn't been so busy "fighting terrorism", then events like hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, subprime mortgage crisis and the following recession could, if not have been avoided, at least been handled a lot better.

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I think it's a serious stretch to say that, coming from someone who sees the "war on terrorism" as completely silly. Those "fighting terrorism" aren't the same people doing, say, banking oversight. While these things are both handled by the government, the government is not all one big team, it's a bunch of individual components working on totally different things with small amounts of overlap.

I agree it's somewhat of a stretch, but not completely irrelevant. I don't mean on an individual level, but more the overall political climate. For instance George W. Bush might not have been re-elected if it wasn't for the wars. I think it pretty safe to say that the "war on terrorism" has effected America in more ways than the obvious ones, but it is of course very hard to say how or how much.

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