A Failure In Generalship Analysis
“A Failure in Persuasion”
In “A Failure in Generalship”, LTC Paul Yingling assigns blame for the failure of the military in the Vietnam War and the dire and deteriorating situation in Iraq at the beginning of 2007, placing it on America’s generals, then and now. Though fearless in its attempt, the essay presents a weak academic argument to back up this claim due to a string of fallacies, statements and arguments based on false or invalid inference. Most notable in his essay is “hasty generalization”, “missing the point”, and the “false dichotomy”. The initial fallacy that undermines the argument is that of “hasty generalization”. A “hasty generalization” is a broad sweeping statement placed on a group of people without a sufficient
In “A Failure in Generalship”, LTC Paul Yingling assigns blame for the failure of the military in the Vietnam War and the dire and deteriorating situation in Iraq at the beginning of 2007, placing it on America’s generals, then and now. Though fearless in its attempt, the essay presents a weak academic argument to back up this claim due to a string of fallacies, statements and arguments based on false or invalid inference. Most notable in his essay is “hasty generalization”, “missing the point”, and the “false dichotomy”. The initial fallacy that undermines the argument is that of “hasty generalization”. A “hasty generalization” is a broad sweeping statement placed on a group of people without a sufficient