Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Carrying on with the idea of Thirty, Lao Tsu makes it clear that weapons and war are never prized by one who follows The Way. Living as I do in a country that is, for all intents and purposes, always at war, I am unsurprised that so many Americans have difficulty finding peace in their own lives. As Lao Tsu says, a victory at war should never be cause for celebration for it occurred as a result of great slaughter. When I hear our government officials talk about civilian casualties in Iraq being at acceptable levels, which they claim is 30,000 innocent lives, I am sickened. A recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins put the number at 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. Even if that number was half wrong…. Mission accomplished, Mr. Bush?
