Persuasion

Reading the two sides of the stories always helps me to have a better understanding of an issue. In this particular case, I was hooked by the title “Beyond the Cloister” over “Learning to Lose”; Robert Lehrman explains that it is more persuasive to use knowledge to advocate a position, instead of the other headline that just informed a position.

Following Aristotle’s division of persuasion into three questions (fact, value, and policy), General David H. Petraeus’s article uses them as part of his writing. He provides facts such as examples to validate his point of view about U.S. Military attending civilian graduate schools. He started his paper saying, “The most powerful tool any soldier carries is not his weapon but his mind,” as evidence or fact to sustain his six reasons to allow the military to study in civilian graduate schools. In addition, General Petraeus considered what values or benefits civilian education will offer to the officers. Concluding that sending military officers to civilian graduate school, as a policy, will promote and increase the understanding between civilian and military.

In his article, General Petraeus covers Aristotle’s three ways of persuasion in his writing: Logos (reason), Pathos (emotion), and Ethos (character); and also he delivers very good examples of implementing them into his rhetorical writing.

The first one is Logos or the appeal to reason that states that all arguments should be sustained in scientific, statistics, examples, and logical principles. This is accomplished through making inferences using deductive reasoning, like the syllogism that a weapon is not the most important tool for soldiers. Petraeus appeals to reason many times in the article, like when he defined that officials should be “pentathlete leaders” who are officials capable of acting and combating in all spectrums of conflict and “not just sprinters or shot putters.” Or when he illustrates how civilian graduate schools provide skills toward two officers with Cornell Ph.D.s to adapt, create, and implement a campaign plan in Iraq based on knowledge from previous operations.

The second one is Pathos (emotion), where appealing to emotion through the language or words to move, anger, or inspire an audience. In the article, General Petraeus appeals to hope when he believes that sending American military officers to civilian graduate schools will help to break stereotypes on both sides of society and also will allow equal understanding of military and civilians. Also, the author promised solutions ahead in regards to communication and writing skills. The author considers that officers improve their ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing in civilian graduate school; thus, the board in the military education programs should improve their curricula across those skills.

The third is Ethos (character) and it appeals to the authority or honesty of the speaker. It is how well the speaker convinces the audience that he is qualified to speak on the particular subject. In the case of General Petraeus, he was a highly decorated four-star general, and also he has a Ph.D. degree in international relations in 1987 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Consequently, he is completely qualified to talk from his own experience. Also, General Petraeus cites his mentor who urged him to look out of the parameters of military forces to understand better the reality inside the U.S. Army. The General takes the middle ground when he mentions that West Point Academy has changed its curricula lately, but it does not mean that it stimulates creativity, individuality, and divergence of thinking that civilian Graduate Schools promote.