Critical reasoning- understanding & critizing arguments
What fallacies, if any, are present in the following passages?
Be sure to explain and justify you answer, that is, if you say that a fallacy has been committed, show where the fallacy occurred, how the passage exhibits the characteristics of the fallacy and explain why you think it is a fallacious argument.
1. Canadian military men died in foreign fields because Canada declared war on other countries, not vice versa. The mere fact that we fought does not necessarily make our cause or causes virtuous.
Few Canadians really paused long enough to really investigate the reasons for our foreign adventures.
I had a long talk with a veteran of World War ll. He was a hand-to-hand- combat instructor and a guard at Allied headquarters in Italy. I questioned him on the reason for Canada's involvement. He replied unhesitatingly that we fought because Britain told us to. That was the only reason.
It is quite clear that the only reason for world wars is that countries that have no business in the conflict get involved
From a letter to the Toronto Sun, November 17, 1983. Quoted in Leo A. Groake and Christopher W. Tindale, Good Reasoning Matters! 3rd ed. Don Mills, ON Oxford University Press, 2004, p284.
2. Background: In passage, William Thorsell is arguing that the waging war is a necessary means of opposing tyrants such as Saddam Hussein. His piece, "The Decisive Exercise of Power," appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail for December 19,1999.
In the 1930's the aversion to war in France and the United Kingdom was so pervasive that some pacifists preferred their own subjugation to resistance in the face of violence. Dandies in the best schools developed ....eloquent rationales for inaction and appeasement, even treason, to avoid the contest for power that was so obviously rising in Europe. They rejected the wisdom that good and evil are perpetually in conflict, and that it is only for food men to do nothing for evil men to triumph.....Remarkably, some of the leading nations in the world still don't appear to "get is" when Saddam Hussein reappears. At root, it seems to be a matter of non-recognition. They just can't see the man for who he is, just as many people just couldn't see "Mr. Hitler" for who he was (the limits of the parallel noted. If you cannot recognize your enemy, you will not defeat him, except by luck of circumstance, and that will rarely do.
Thorsell, Willam. " The Decisive Exercise of Power." Globe and Mail(December 19, 1999). Quoted in Trudy Govier, A Practical Study of Argument, 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001, p.206.