An excellent quotation and unquestionably true.

The fact remains that both tyranny and terrorism are wrong and you cannot fight one with the other.

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Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

Here are some other related quotes by a very wise man:

"Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations."

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other."

James Madison

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"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

...You and me are on the same wavelength. Great quotes.

Osama bin Ladin has never admitted to having anything to do with the attacks of 9/11 although he did come out after the fact in support of them. That does not make him guilty of any involvement in them.

Al Qaeda, while founded by Osama bin Ladin, is now a movement encompassing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. While it could be stated that a "member" of al Qaeda admitted to or has taken credit for the attacks of 9/11 it is really rather moot because al Qaeda really doesn't have members, only supporters of the "cause" for which they fight.

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Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

To paraphrase Orwell: "Those who control the prevailing orthodoxy, control the present and determine who the future terrorists are". In this way, yesterdays terrorist is tomorrows freedom fighter and vice versa, depending on ones perspective. This explains....

....for instance, why Nelson Mandela used to be considered the worlds number one terrorist by the powerful, before he became respected as the freedom fighter par excellence by the same powerful interests. So we....

....are are in the ludicrous situation whereby the terrorists are deemed to be people "we" do not happen to like at any given historical moment in time. This is why the word "terrorism" is underscored with double-standards and the reason why the word is so subjective and devoid of meaning......

.....In this respect, the word ranks alongside other meaningless words like "democracy", "freedom" and "liberty". This also explains why there is no internationally accepted definition of the word. If there were, politicians from the leading powers would be continually hauled in front of the ICC alongside Milosovic and others.....

......So better to keep the term vague. Tuatara, in a previous thread, highlighted brilliantly the US's complicit role in the perpetuation of a succession of terrorist atrocities throughout the world. But this must be internally denied. Such actions must remain a taboo as far as the general population is concerned.

You are correct. Al-Qaida "members" are not card holding affiliates in the same way for example, a member of a political party is. Al-qaida are a loose confederation of adherents or followers. The Taliban are a similar grouping. The word "Talib" literally translates as "student". So when the bombs of the powerful obliterate and destroy buildings and blow apart the limbs and internal organs of women, men and children, these same bombs do not discriminate between the card holding member, the student, the resistance fighter, the small child, the elderly person, the religious fundamentalist obscurantist or a combination of all of them. Bombs merely rain there deadly force upon real life flesh and blood human beings.